


Forget-Me-Not

by hopeassassin



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:20:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 44,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeassassin/pseuds/hopeassassin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How was it possible that she could recognize something as complex as his emotional state just by watching his expressions and gestures, but she couldn’t do something as elementary as recognize the face of her life-long friend and husband of two years?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yamiland](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=yamiland).



> Written for Yamiland's prompt over at Tumblr: _"what if Satsuki has a car accident and she loses all her memories of Dai-chan?" + "all memories of him!! (from the first time she saw him when they were kids) And Dai-chan has to make her remember. please~ :'c"_
> 
> This is my fill for it.

Habits are a very interesting thing.

 

The first time you do something, it takes all your effort, focus and a considerable amount of time to get it right. You feel as though it will be an eternity before you can actually pull it off right without needing to spend an ungodly amount of time _trying_ and _concentrating_ and just how _hard_ can something so minor feel, anyway?

 

After the fourth or fifth time that you do it right, you start feeling like you’re finally getting the hang of it. You start thinking that you’re doing quite well. So you continue doing it, improving with every subsequent success.

 

By the time you realize it, you’ve already become so proficient at it, you can also do a bunch of other things, or you do it with so much ease that you don’t even to pay conscious attention to your actions while you do something out of habit.

 

For a lot of people, driving is a habit. Going to work on the bus is a habit. Doing routine work is habit.

 

There are many things people do out of habit. Some people take less time to form habits, but the inner workings of their habitual actions are pretty much the same as those of others.

 

Habits are also interesting in the fact you don’t pay attention to doing them when everything goes how it always does. A habit isn’t broken as long as nothing out of the ordinary happens while you’re doing your habitual actions. You don’t pay attention to a habitual quirk until something disrupts it.

 

You don’t pay conscious heed to habits until something happens that prevents your habitual outcome from coming true.

 

For Satsuki, going to work with Daiki by car was a habit.

 

Before they had a car, however, going to work on the bus was a habit as well.

 

Switching from one routine to another took her a bit of time. But by the fifth day, it was as normal as breathing to her. She didn’t even need to pay attention to the places they passed while she daydreamed on her way to work.

 

That’s how her mornings on the bus always went. How they’d always gone. Hitch-free, normal, everyday mornings.

 

Until the morning that broke her habit.

 

And shook her life from its very foundations.

 

* * *

 

Daiki was just on his way back from lunch with the guys from the company when his office phone started ringing. He had forgotten his cell on his desk when he was leaving earlier because he had been late.

 

So while he languidly made his way towards his office with Takao and the rest of them, laughing at that ridiculous joke someone had cracked on their way up the elevator, he didn’t spare much thought to the familiar melody of his office phone going off.

 

He decided to enjoy his lunch break to the fullest, leaving his secretary take the call for him instead, while he finished his conversation with the guys.

 

Takao bunched up the paper wrap of his sandwich in a neat little ball and shot it towards the nearby trashcan with impressive precision. All the other guys from the office went into a chorus of approval, of course—except for Daiki, who merely shook his head in disbelief and crumpled the paper wrap of his own sandwich while his secretary was picking up the phone in that pleasant, business tone of hers.

 

The former Touou ace was just telling the rest of them that they knew nothing about the history behind Takao and his acquaintance before they got hired for the same company, giving the group his back right before he threw the little paper ball right over his shoulder and straight into the trashcan, without sparing it as much as a glance.

 

The renewed (and louder) chorus of approval and wowed reactions was why Daiki was pretty busy daydreaming about high school and college and how easy life used to be when his secretary told him he should take this call from his office.

 

He thanked her for her effort in a cheery tone, a small smile still playing on his lips. He didn’t notice the grimness of the woman’s expression, or the graveness of her tone.

 

Only once he was safely in his office, seated in his chair, and picking up the phone’s receiver did he realize that this was not one of his superiors or clients calling about routine work.

 

“Aomine Daiki?” asked an unfamiliar, emotionally detached voice from the receiver.

 

“Speaking,” Daiki said, traces of his earlier mirth still on his face and in his voice.

 

“You have been listed as ‘first of kin’, so we’ve been trying to get in touch with you, sir.”

 

And just as quickly as it had come, all feelings of amusement and lightness left Daiki completely. His blood ran cold in his veins and he felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach even before the woman on the other end of the line began explaining to him.

 

“There has been an accident…”

 

* * *

 

When she finally cracked her eyes open, she honestly felt like her lids weighted a ton each.

 

Just opening her eyes felt like a huge effort. Especially when her mind felt like it was surrounded by this thick fog, which clouded her very thinking process.

 

It took her a few shallow intakes and exhales of breath—her only way of measuring time with the heavy disorientation she was currently bogged down with—to realize that there was an impressive flurry of activity around her.

 

When she tried to move one of her limbs, every muscle in her body shrieked in protest, sending sharp pangs of searing pain coursing through her every nerve ending. She tried to groan in discomfort, but her vocal cords refused to comply as well.

 

In a short moment of dimmed consciousness and crippling discomfort, she felt the horrifying notion that her body was giving out on her sink its way into her mind.

 

The longer time she spent awake, the more her awareness started to truly kick in.

 

The formless figures moving around her in a hectic pace started taking shapes. She noticed that she was surrounded by doctors and nurses, and that the blinding whiteness of her surroundings was probably because she was currently in a hospital—judging by the sheer amount of medical folk bustling around her.

 

She also noticed that the unpleasant throb and the thick fog clinging to her mind were actually quite painful and unsettling.

 

“Doctor,” one of the nurses spoke up, voice laced with trepidation. “She’s awake.”

 

The nurse’s barely contained excitement seemed to draw the attention of the addressed specialist, who turned to look at her lying almost motionlessly in her bed, blinking her bleary eyes up at them.

 

When their gazes met, she realized that she was looking at a familiar face. Recognition came a bit slowly to her as the dull throb in her head made thinking especially difficult.

 

Her green-haired doctor took a step towards her, taking her chin gently in hand while he took a small flashlight out of his breast pocket, holding it in her eyes.

 

She squinted at the glare of the light, managing to make a successful sound of protest this time. When she tried to shift in the bed so she could sit up, she noticed that there was an oxygen mask on her mouth, preventing her from speaking.

 

Not that she probably had the energy to, anyway.

 

“She’s conscious,” the familiar doctor confirmed, removing the mask from her face.

 

Its presence had been next to non-existent while there, but once the mask was removed, she realized how much more difficult taking fulfilling breaths of her own actually was.

 

“Madam,” one of the nurses began as she sat on a chair next to her bed, “I need to ask you a couple of questions. Can you nod for me if you understand me?”

 

It took the woman in the bed a few seconds to wrap her mind around the question before she could agree with a barely perceivable nod. The nurse smiled at her reassuringly, and it was probably cheesy of her to feel that way, but she could almost swear that the kind expression of the woman in white made some of the unpleasant discomfort disappear from her bedridden frame.

 

“Do you know where you are right now?”

 

Her eyes shifted ever so slowly towards the familiar tall silhouette further by her room’s window. The man looked tense and untypically uptight even for himself.

 

She cracked a tiny smile—or at least tried to—as she looked at him, before moving her gaze back to the nurse talking to her.

 

She nodded.

 

“Can you try to tell me your name, please?” the kind healthcare worker queried patiently, jotting down something on the clipboard in her hands.

 

“Sa—” she began, but her voice gave out on her before she could articulate.

 

She swallowed thickly, took in a deeper breath—which made her chest hurt in a mind-numbing way—and tried again.

 

“Satsuki,” she rasped out. Her voice was scratchy and barely existent. It scared her. “Momoi Satsuki.”

 

Truthfully, Satsuki felt a bit apprehensive when there was that _look_ that all the medical staff shared amongst themselves after she spoke. A quiet chorus of something she didn’t quite catch, but which sounded oddly like ‘maiden name’ passed among the nurses and her doctor, before the one interviewing her continued.

 

“How old are you?”

 

“Twenty-seven,” Satsuki said as her gaze slid down to her body. There were multiple tubes going into her arms and several machines monitoring many of her vital signs.

 

“All right,” the nurse said as she continued writing something on her paper. “What’s the last thing that you remember?”

 

Satsuki let her eyes wander to the ceiling, a glazed over look taking over them as she tried to recall. The thick fog that had just started to lift on her present was much thicker on her last memories. Drawing them out felt like an incredible effort to her.

 

“I was… on the bus, on my way to work. I was staring out of the window, thinking about something… And then… I don’t know, something _happened_.” Her brows furrowed and she made a grimace when her throat started hurting. Since when was talking such a burdensome task? “Why am I in Midorin’s hospital?”

 

The man in question pushed his glasses a bit higher on the bridge of his nose while he made a gesture towards the nurses. They checked that she was attended to and accounted for anything she might need before making themselves scarce.

 

Midorima Shintaro then heaved a great sigh once he was alone with Satsuki in her room.

 

“You were in an accident earlier today,” he told her, his tone worn and the only clue she got that he had actually been worried for the past few hours. “The bus you remember taking to work—a truck went out of control and rammed into it. We had to make some emergency surgery because of all the internal bleeding into your stomach, but for the most part—you’ll be fine.”

 

He removed his glasses to massage the bridge of his nose before turning to look at her again once he repositioned them on his face. Satsuki gave a thoughtful hum at his claim.

 

“That explains why I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck,” she said with a tiny curl of her lips but Midorima’s expression remained stony. “Oh, come on—it’s a classic.”

 

The former shooter pushed the glasses up his nose again, still as unamused.

 

“Not funny. You could’ve died.” His deadpan expression and the seriousness of his tone chased out all desire she might have had for making light of the situation. “You have no idea how lucky you are to walk out of that car crash with just the injuries you had. You’ll need to stay in here for a couple of days maximum, when there were several fatalities from that accident.”

 

Satsuki shifted her gaze guiltily to her hands lying motionlessly next to her sides, a metal clip stuck to her left index finger where her arm lay atop the covers.

 

“I’m sorry,” she croaked out sincerely. She had no idea that it had been such a serious situation. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”

 

Midorima shook his head and turned his face away from her.

 

“That’s not at all what I meant,” he told her while he got up from his seat next to her bed. “I know you must be feeling really down right now—the crash, the drugs we used to put you under and the stress from the surgery must be taking their toll on your body—but the good news is that everything will be okay. You don’t seem to be suffering from any head injuries and cognitive setbacks, which were our greatest worry in your case, so you’ll be fine and good to leave here in a few days.”

 

She sent him the best smile she could manage while he manoeuvred his way around her bed and headed for the door to her room.

 

“Thanks, Midorin,” she told him sincerely. “Sorry for worrying you.”

 

He grumbled something under his breath (it sounded somewhat like ‘Who was worried’ or another thing in the same spirits, but she could’ve just been hearing things, too) before he cleared his throat and spoke to her again.

 

“We called your family. They should all be on their way now. You should get some rest before they arrive,” he advised as he opened the door.

 

“Thanks, Midorin,” she called after him again while he closed the door to her room, leaving her to drift off to fitful sleep while she waited for her mom and dad to arrive.

 

What she couldn’t understand, though, was why Midorima would refer to her two parents as “they are all on their way”—since when were two people enough to quantify as “all”?

 

Then again, Midorin had always been kind of quirky, so she supposed she could let this one slide.

 

After all, he was the one who had saved her life today.

 

* * *

 

When he first heard on the phone that she had been in an accident, Daiki had felt panic unlike any other seize him. The nurse proceeded to tell him that they had Satsuki in the emergency room and that they were operating on her to make sure she wouldn’t die on them and he felt like the room started spinning. He was grateful for having been seated when picking up the phone because the more the woman on the other end of the line told him, the fainter he felt.

 

He didn’t even manage to let the ‘She is stable for now’ comment fully sink in before he was racing out the door of his office, grabbing his suit jacket on the way and bolting for the elevator on their floor.

 

He pressed the button several times before he realized he didn’t have the presence of mind to wait for the tardy contraption to reach his floor. He opted to make a run for the stairs just when Takao noticed the haste he was in.

 

“Where’s the fire, champ?” the raven-haired man said jokingly, hoping to make his friend feel a bit better.

 

“Satsuki’s in the hospital. Her bus got in an accident. Talk to the chief from me, okay? I need to go, _now_ ,” Daiki told the much shorter guy while passing by him on the way to the stairwell.

 

It took Kazunari a moment of vacuous blinking after his friend for his words to finally sink in. If he could’ve thought that Daiki was just making stuff up to skip on work just from his expression, the way he took the steps three or four at a time while making impressive leaps down them made the dark haired man very much aware that this was no joke nor ruse.

 

He was on the phone, talking to their branch manager within the next minute, explaining to their superior the reason behind the sudden absence of one of their main financial consultants.

 

In the back of his mind, while he was making the necessary calls, Takao prayed that everything would be all right with Satsuki-chan.

 

She was a great woman and all, but most of all, if anything were to happen to her, he really couldn’t picture how Daiki would take it—and, honestly, those two didn’t need shit like that disrupting their life like that right now.

 

* * *

 

If asked how he got from the office to the hospital, Daiki wouldn’t be able to answer.

 

The whole trip there was a complete blur to him.

 

Actually, from the moment he’d heard the hospital staff woman tell him that Satsuki has been in an accident, a very loud buzz had started ringing in his ears, drowning out all the rest of the sounds and noises around him. It felt to him like the whole world got muffled. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t _think_ about anything but how in the world such nonsense could happen to _her_ , the light of his life, the only person who could put up with all his bullshit and still love him through it all.

 

So how he managed to get himself bodily from the office building to the hospital was an enigma to him. He couldn’t have taken the car—because it was in for repairs, which was _why she had to take the bus to work today in the first place_ , oh God, this was his entire fault—so he must’ve taken a taxi because he couldn’t be arsed with the public transportation, or how unacceptably _slow_ it was in getting him from point A to point B.

 

The whole way there was an immemorial trance, during which the only thing he could hear was the loud buzz in his ears and the dull throb of his heart in his chest, clenching tightly and uncomfortably at the thought of what kind of state he was going to find her in when he eventually did arrive.

 

The first moment of clarity he finally experienced was when he slammed his hands on the information desk, demanding immediate information about where she was.

 

To her credit, if the nurse behind the desk was ruffled by his roughness and imperiousness, she kept her comments to herself. Instead, she took one look at his face—at the urgency, panic and desperation contorting his features—and gave him the number of the room right away.

 

Years of basketball practice and being one of the Generation of Miracles made it possible for Daiki to get from the front desk, up four flights of stairs and rushing down the long corridor of the hospital until he was standing in front of room 306. He took only a moment to breathe in and ignore the scowling nurses along the hospital hallway scolding him for running in the halls.

 

It took all his self-control not to burst into the room, possibly taking down the door along with himself, but when he did enter—as normally as physically possible in this situation—the wave of relief that washed over every fibre of his being at the sight that greeted him beyond was indescribable.

 

He had been so scared that he’d find her all bandaged up, beaten and _broken_ and then he would break down, too, because seeing her in any kind of pain just destroyed him every time. He’d been so worried because the nurse on the phone had told him it had been a very serious crash, and that she was operated on in the emergency room—the _emergency room_ —and he had been so, so horrified that her beautiful face and body would’ve been twisted beyond belief.

 

But instead, as he went into her hospital room, he found her there—sitting in bed, reading a book in her hospital gown, a calm look on her face as her eyes skimmed the page. There was a myriad of machines hooked up to her form, monitoring her vitals, and her head was wrapped in bandages at her forehead. Her arms and collar were littered with bruises, but considering the kind of impact it must’ve been, he guessed it was only to be expected. Other than that, she looked unscathed and surprisingly well.

 

Not to mention _awake_.

 

“Oh, God, Satsuki, you’re okay,” he breathed out and she seemed to notice him for the first time after he had entered. “I’m _so glad_ you seem fine.”

 

He closed the door behind him and took the several strides into her room until he was at the side of her bed. His hands took one of hers in his grasp and he kissed her fingers, her knuckles and the back of her palm repeatedly before burying his face against her dainty hand.

 

“I was so worried when they called. I thought my heart would stop.” He swallowed dryly, through the morbid thoughts of what else had popped into his mind when he had heard she was rushed to an emergency room. “I thought I was going to lose you, and I got so scared.”

 

He put her hand down and gave her a thorough once-over from up close. When he was sure that he wouldn’t be doing her any harm with it, he pulled her into his embrace, pressing her up against his frame and burying his nose into the crook of her neck.

 

She smelled like hospital, disinfectant and medicine, and not at all like the Satsuki he knew and adored, but he’d let that slide for now because it was thanks to the hard work of the people in this establishment that he was able to hold her now like this—bruised, disorientated, but not all that worse for wear overall.

 

He held her in his embrace for what felt to him like an eternity, but he couldn’t help it—he needed to feel her with his body, to know that she was there, that she was real, that there was no reason to shake with fear and anxiety anymore because she would be _fine_. He held her until his shoulders stopped shaking with emotion, reassured by the soft press of her tiny hand against his much larger shoulder blade.

 

“I’m really sorry for worrying you,” she said quietly, her voice muffled against his chest.

 

He shook his head. He didn’t trust his voice to say another word, so instead he just held onto her a bit longer.

 

When he eventually pulled away from her with a sigh, taking a look at her face from up close, he gave her a tiny smile. His thumb ran along the side of her face, gently rubbing against her skin—his touch made even lighter by the ugliness of the bruise just on the side of her cheek.

 

“How are you feeling?” he asked her at last, finally settling down enough to be able to have a normal conversation.

 

He was also calm enough to notice that she was unusually detached when she was staring into his face, and it could just be him but he could almost _swear_ that she was leaning away from his touch.

 

But that was ridiculous. There was no way Satsuki would be uncomfortable with him being so close to her and holding her like that.

 

“Um,” she began uncertainly, sitting back until her body was securely resting against the pillows. Daiki didn’t pay much heed to the way she pried her fingers away from his—carefully, uncertainly—as she looked back up to him. “I was feeling really disoriented and out of it when I woke up. But Midorin said I’d be fine if I just had some rest and nutrients, and I really feel much better after taking a nap.”

 

He smiled at her again, and the air he exhaled should’ve been calming, reassuring then. She was fine, she was doing great, and even Midorima had told her that everything would be all right.

 

So what was with this anxiety creeping up on him?

 

And just _why_ was she looking at him like that.

 

Her gaze shifted away from him, and she looked uncomfortable as she fidgeted under his scrutiny. Daiki’s brows furrowed.

 

“Are you all right? Should I go get you anything?” he asked her, inching a bit closer towards her from his seat on her bed.

 

She shook her head slowly with a polite smile—and the formality of her expression threw him off.

 

“What’s wrong, Satsuki? Why are you acting so weird?” he demanded at length, his tone coming out a bit harsher than he absolutely intended.

 

Then again, considering the kind of noon he’d had, he did believe he was entitled to some snappiness today.

 

The pink-haired woman in the bed slowly turned her gaze to look at him, blinking profusely at him from under pretty, thick eyelashes. He quirked his brow expectantly as she sized him up—her pink eyes cold as they studied his face—and waited for her to say what was going on.

 

“I’ve been… wondering for a while since you came in here, but… Who are you?”

 

He stared vacantly back at her, vaguely expecting her to burst out laughing any moment and tell him that he should’ve seen his face when she’d said that.

 

She didn’t. Instead, she continued looking at him with that uncertain, skittish look of a scared forest animal whom a kid is trying to trick to come closer.

 

He blinked several times, waiting for the punch line to come. But it never did.

 

“If this is some kind of joke, I don’t find it funny. So drop it, okay?” he told her in a tense tone, truly miffed by the poor taste of her humour.

 

She threw him a quizzical look—still just as detached as when he’d first walked in through the door.

 

“Why would I be joking?” she demanded, not understanding him the least.

 

Daiki’s face contorted in a grimace.

 

“Are you serious asking me this?” He shook his head in disbelief, while pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, I don’t get what elaborate ruse you’re pulling off here, but you need to stop it, because I’m gonna start getting angry soon.”

 

“What _ruse_?” she emphasized, pushing herself back into her pillow. “There is no _ruse_. I just want to know who you are, because from the moment you walked in this room you’ve been talking as though you know me, and I felt uncomfortable saying I have no idea who you are because it seemed like I _should_ have at least a clue. But I don’t, and I’m sorry. So, I’ll ask again—who are you? How do we know each other?”

 

Of all the things Daiki never wanted to hear in his life, these particular words coming from that particular mouth had to rank the highest.

 

And as he sat back on her bed, looking at her with a deadpan expression on his face, he finally made sense of the distant look on her face, of the inching away from him, of the awkwardness in his presence.

 

She had no idea who he was.

 

She really, honestly, had forgotten who Aomine Daiki was in her life.

 

The moment he realized it was also the moment his mind rejected the notion.

 

“You really don’t remember me?” he somehow managed to ask, his voice strangled in his throat.

 

She shifted her magenta eyes to him, looking at him with a guilty expression in her features as she studied his face closely. He waited as she did, hoping that maybe looking at him better, longer, would make her answer change, and that she’d relent and tell him she had actually been kidding all along like he’d thought.

 

She shook her head slowly.

 

“I’m sorry, I really don’t.”

 

Her words made him feel like a bucket of ice cold water was poured all over him. The chill that ran through his whole body was horrifying.

 

“Were we close?” she asked tentatively, with a small smile.

 

He didn’t hear her. The roar of his pulse in his ears was too loud. He couldn’t make sense of anything but the panic and terror that seized him in that very moment.

 

How could she not remember him? How was it _physically possible_ to forget him completely?

 

He had been there her entire life! They had gone to the same schools, the same kindergarten, they had the same after-school activities for the most part, all their trips for holidays had been together—even if she had forgotten the past few years of their life together, there was no way she could’ve forgotten a lifetime worth of memories, right?

 

_Right?_

 

He refused to accept this.

 

He wouldn’t take this standing down.

 

“Aomine Daiki. That’s my name. We were friends our whole lives—we know each other practically since the crib. We went to the same schools, you were the manager of all the basketball teams I played in. Does it ring any bells?”

 

He was leaning in closer to her as the anxiety seized a firmer hold on him. He needed to remind himself repeatedly to rein in some of his emotions because he didn’t want nor mean to scare her.

 

And the way she was subtly inching away from him on her bed spoke to him in volumes of how poorly he was doing so far.

 

She gave his comment some thought—trying to recall what he was trying to remind her of—but coming up short-handed. She shook her head.

 

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

 

Her words stabbed him right through the heart. She couldn’t honestly mean that, right? There’s no way!

 

“Come on, there’s no way you can really not remember anything – we’ve known each other forever, we were always together. We got married two years ago—don’t you remember that? The wedding and all the preparations? You and our moms were so excited. Seriously, nothing?”

 

He had placed his hand over hers in his eagerness, but the moment she shook her head again, looking increasingly more discomforted by his closeness, he finally snapped back to reality thanks to the gravity of the situation.

 

“I know this must be really horrible to you, Aomine-san—”

 

 _‘Aomine-san?!_ ’ his mind echoed in incredulousness and disgust.

 

“—But I honestly can’t remember anything about you. I’m really, really sorry.”

 

It was like she had placed a huge, heavy boulder on his chest with those words and that overly formal address of his name. Over the years he’d been a lot of things to her—Dai-chan, Aomine-kun, Daiki, ‘jerk’, ‘bastard’—but never, in their entire lives, had she been so cold and distant to call him something as impersonal as _Aomine-san_.

 

His own wife, the woman who had known him his entire life, was talking to him with last name—the last name she _shared_ , nonetheless—and a ‘-san’.

 

He sat back and put some distance between them, and he tried to ignore how that seemed to set her a bit more at ease. He turned his head to stare out the window, incredulous, disbelieving how such a thing could be happening to him.

 

His heart was hammering in his chest, going at what felt a thousand beats per minute. His pulse had gone insane when anxiety and fear had seized him, when hopelessness dawned upon him once again.

 

She didn’t remember him.

 

He ran his hands up from his chin to his cheeks and up his forehead, until they buried in his hair. Daiki grabbed his head with both hands, the elbows of which he propped up on his knees, as he stared at the tiled floor of the hospital with vehement disbelief.

 

“Are you all right, Aomine-san? You look like you’re in pain,” Satsuki said and the twinge of worry in her voice really got to Daiki.

 

How was it possible that she could recognize something as complex as his emotional state just by watching his expressions and gestures, but she couldn’t do something as elementary as recognize the face of her life-long friend and husband of two years.

 

“No,” he told her grimly at last, taking his head out of his hands’ hold but refusing to look at her as he let it loll against his collarbone. “I’m not fine.”

 

There wasn’t a word, nor phrase, in any human language that could accurately express just _how far_ from _fine_ he actually was.


	2. Part Two

Satsuki wondered if any of the people surrounding her, _hounding_ her right then could actually understand how awkward this felt.

 

From what she heard, she had gone through a rather unpleasant car crash. She didn’t remember much of it because the moment the truck made impact with the bus, she hit her head against the window to her side and she lost consciousness.

 

However, the truth was that she felt pretty much fine. The stitches on her side were feeling kind of unpleasant, and she had felt like the truck had literally run over her instead of the bus, upon waking up, but now she felt so good and she had pretty much all her stuff together with the exception of one little detail.

 

The navy haired guy with the intense cerulean eyes who wouldn’t stop _staring_ at her throughout her entire exam with Midorin.

 

She wasn’t particularly overjoyed about giving the brain department folks something to—she meant no pun with this—rack their brains over, but the way they fussed over her was starting to get ridiculous.

 

And, seriously, who could _possibly_ imagine, out of all of them there, how it felt like to be the single person in that room to have no clue what was going on while garnering such lavish attention?

 

They kept asking her questions that made no sense to her—about when she was a kid and moving in with her parents at the house they had lived in for years; about kindergarten and some of the greater events in it; about middle school and her hobbies and just what did all that _stuff_ have to do with her accident, _seriously_?

 

They couldn’t honestly believe that there was a real chance she could’ve just lost all her memories about a person who was supposedly a large part of her life, right?

 

Frankly, she was starting to think she was in some wacky version of candid camera.

 

The only thing she couldn’t wrap her mind around—other than getting such expensive, realistic-looking props for her hospital room—is how they convinced ridiculously straight-laced _Midorin_ to take part in this insanity as well.

 

She was starting to get more and more worried the more they asked her. Because with every subsequent answer of hers, Midorin’s brow kept narrowing, the ugly crease on his forehead that came on when he was thinking about something really hard coming into view. A confused Midorima was a very bad sign, especially when he’s one of the most promising resident neurosurgeons in the whole region and he’s the one in charge of fixing you.

 

Another thing she noticed and unnerved her just as much as Midorin’s rising confusion was the fact that the more questions she kept answering—though she mostly had difficulty recollecting them clearly in the first place—the more impatient the navy-haired guy in the suit at the back of the medical team was becoming.

 

Aomine’s arms were crossed over his chest when he figured that he had no idea what to do with his limbs as he listened to Midorima examine his wife. With every following distortion of their childhood, he started losing his cool. It got to the point when he ended up needing to tap a forefinger against his suit’s sleeve to keep himself from starting to pace right there in the middle of the room.

 

This was ridiculous. This couldn’t be happening. Was she starting to make shit up? He got that she was _confused_ , in _shock_ , and so on and so forth, and really, _he got that_. But how could he be honestly expected to be completely cool with her just spouting nonsense like “I don’t remember if the neighbours had kids”, “I joined the Teikou Basketball Team as the manager because it seemed like it would be fun”, and all that sort of bullshit?! Did she honestly, _honestly_ , think he was buying that?!

 

Although he was _really_ curious to hear what she’d have to say when Midorima asked her about recent years. Sure, she could play it off from the time they were just friends. How was she going to make sense of the time when they started dating, sharing a place, and more importantly, _got married_?

 

The golden band on his right ring finger was slickened with the perspiration his nervousness brought about.

 

For Satsuki, the more they kept prodding at her, trying to make her recall this or that, the more ill at ease she felt. There was this dull throb in her head every time she tried to remember something about the time range they were asking of her. When she cited her memories, she was sure they weren’t a lie—however, something about her saying them made her feel uncomfortable and caused her chest to clench.

 

It had started out bad, but the more she kept trying to remember these things, the worse she felt. What had started out as a slight discomfort and an annoying buzz in her head, soon became a full-fledged migraine and the more she kept trying to push herself, the worse she felt.

 

It got to the point when she doubled over in pain, clutching at her head when she heard an ear-piercing sound resound in the room. She grabbed her head with both hands, bending down at the waist and burying her head in her knees. She couldn’t hear herself over the loudness of the shrill sound in her head but she was moaning pitifully against her covers as she shook.

 

Midorima and all the nurses were instantly on alarm when she had her fit. They were instantly on the go to stabilize her, ruffling through drawers for drugs and inserting syringes into her IV. She was saying some incoherent words together as she trembled in pain in her bed, and Daiki stared, wide-eyed, while all of it transpired.

 

He stared with his lips slightly parted and his hands slumped at his sides, no trace of his earlier impatience left in him. He watched her thrash around when they tried to pry her fingers away from her head because the way she was clutching at it was going to reopen her stitches and she would hurt herself. He watched even as she kept screaming and crying, telling them she was in pain and that she didn’t want to be assaulted with their questions anymore and she just wanted some peace so _get out, get out right now_.

 

That had been the last thing he could handle. He couldn’t listen, he couldn’t watch anymore. She was breaking down and all he wanted was to scoop her up in his arms and rock her back and forth in his embrace until she had settled down.

 

But the mere thought of that made him realize that the moment he put his arms around her, she would recoil violently from his touch and shove him away before he can say or do anything at all for her. If anything, his attempt to calm her down would make her fit even worse.

 

And the notion of that was absolutely flooring.

 

He couldn’t bear to watch her in pain, and he couldn’t bear to see her like this. Least of all, he couldn’t bear being the one she ended up like this over.

 

So he did as she commanded them all and got out of her hospital room, letting the door slam behind him.

 

* * *

 

The next time Shintaro found Daiki, it was pure chance that he was passing by the waiting room on the upper floor. It’s not like he was worried about Aomine so he had gone looking for him or anything.

 

When he _did_ find the former Touou ace, though, he couldn’t help feeling a stab of sympathy for the bastard. They had never really been much in terms of friendship—the one who got along with Aomine in Shintaro’s life was Kazunari—but over their many run ins, and through all the years of playing basketball together, the two had established a bond of mutual respect and reserved supportiveness.

 

After all, there was no way Shintaro could actually _dislike_ the person whose offhand, blunt and brutally honest as always comment had spurred him to act upon his feelings towards the man whom he now couldn’t live without.

 

There was also no way that he wouldn’t feel a stab of pain at the sight of his dishevelled hair, tie askew and a can of juice in his hand as he sat sprawled out in the deserted ward’s waiting room.

 

Midorima sighed as he made his way over, sitting down in the plush chair neighbouring Daiki’s. They were both staring ahead, at a point in the wall of no particular value but great interest in the presented awkward silence that befell them.

 

“We put her under when she wouldn’t settle down,” he informed the blue haired man coolly. “She’s still asleep for now, but her parents just arrived. They’re waiting for her to wake up in her room. You can go join them, if you want.”

 

It took him a couple of minutes to finally find the strength to respond in any way, but when he did, Daiki just shook his head, letting his chin fall against his collar.

 

“Nah, I’m not going back in there.”

 

Midorima’s eyes narrowed at the unnaturally cool and collected tone Aomine had used to speak with on the matter.

 

“How come? You couldn’t even stop to fill the administration card upon arriving here, and now I suddenly can’t make you stay in the same room with her?” His brows furrowed further. “Or is it that being around her when she claims to have forgotten about you made her undesirable for you to stick around?”

 

The navy haired man’s outburst was so sudden, so violent, that it made Midorima jump slightly in his seat. At the doctor’s words, Daiki grabbed his can of unfinished juice and flung it across the waiting room. It smashed against the wall, splattering the fruity liquid around.

 

Only once the can was still against the ground did the former Shuutoku ace notice that the tin was severely dented—had been, even before it was thrown.

 

“ _Never_ ,” Daiki ground out between his clenched teeth in a feral snarl, “ _ever_ say shit like that to me. _Ever_. You hear me?!”

 

His glare was so severe and murderous that even the not-so-easily fazed Midorima needed a remarkable amount of self-control to keep his face from betraying how much Aomine expression in that moment had frightened him.

 

“ _Of course_ I want to fucking be there for her, dumbass. I want nothing but to stay next to her, hold her and console her that everything will be fine—but you saw it yourself, didn’t you?! How violently she reacted when you kept asking her about the things she used to do with me?! She was in serious fucking _pain_ , _real pain_ , when she kept trying to remember the situations.”

 

In all the years they had known each other, Midorima had never seen Aomine so upset. And neither had he heard the slightly shorter man talk quite as much in so little time.

 

“How do you expect me to waltz in there, acting as if I’m totally cool with everything, when my own damn wife starts writhing in pain and agony at the mere fact of trying to remember my face or the things we’ve been through together?”

 

Only after he’d said it in the way he did, did Midorima realize how cruel he had been with his sarcastic remark earlier. He truly hadn’t meant to be as offensive towards Aomine.

 

Only after he had seen the broken look in the other’s sapphire gaze did he realize that he had crossed a line with that comment.

 

“I get that you all think that I’m practically emotionless and that I’m made of stone or something, but _I’m not_. Okay?” He was up on his feet and pacing back and forth now. “There aren’t many things that get to me, but having my wife—the fucking _love of my life_ , you jackass—say straight to my face that she has no recollections of ever seeing me before, telling her examining doctors that she can’t remember a _thing_ that we’ve ever done together, and be reduced to a screaming, agonizing heap when she keeps pushing herself to try to recall – _that does get to me_. It gets to me and I feel like my goddamn sanity is slipping because I have no idea what to do—do you get that? Wanting to comfort someone who means the world to you but having them _flinch away from your touch_ —can you even _imagine how that feels like_ , you asshole?”

 

Midorima’s emerald eyes shifted guiltily away from the pacing man in front of him. He swallowed around the lump in his throat, feeling like the proverbial bad guy in the tale for the first time in his life.

 

He heard Daiki slump in the seat next to him again, and he saw him lean forward until his face was buried in his hands. He was slowly rocking back and forth on the toes and heels of his feet as he sat in the plush chair, and Midorima didn’t need his impressive intelligence to be able to tell that Aomine was the very picture of despair in that moment.

 

“I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know what to think. I have no idea what to expect. I feel so fucking lost that I feel like breaking shit just so I can get some sense of control over _something_ for a change…”

 

His malignant hiss ended up sounding more like a desperate sob by the end. Midorima heaved a deep sigh and placed a hand on the other man’s shoulder.

 

The former Shuutoku player’s hand was large, solid and just a bit reassuring on Daiki’s arm.

 

“I know that our having no certain answers for you is definitely not helping you any. But the fact is, this is an unprecedented case. All her tests came back normal, and there should be nothing wrong with her head. If anything, that tells us that whatever happened, it shouldn’t be permanent. So,” he tightened his fingers’ hold on Daiki’s shoulder, giving him a slight shake, “what you _need_ to do is get yourself together. She’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Everything will be all right. In my opinion, this is most probably a temporary thing. She’ll remember everything soon enough. So you need to tough this one out for now, until she does.”

 

Daiki head had risen enough just so he could give Midorima the most heart-rending and soul-searching look the doctor had even been the recipient of in his entire life. The unusual vulnerability in the former Touou basketball player’s face was so untypical and disarming that Shintaro felt the need to reassure him again.

 

“Okay? Everything will be fine. Just do your likeliest and God will do the best.”

 

He got up from his seat and turned to give Aomine one last look over his shoulder before sauntering off.

 

The former genius shooter felt much more comfortable with the lopsided smile of incomplete conviction on Daiki’s face.

 

“Man proposes, God disposes, huh?” Aomine said with a sigh, making Shintaro smirk smugly and push the glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

 

“Precisely,” the doctor told him before walking off towards the stairwell, leaving Daiki to his thoughts.

 

He stopped briefly at the door before he could get out of earshot.

 

“Oh, and by the way—you better get away from here before one of the cleaning ladies finds you with the mess you made of that wall. They take the hygiene of this place really to heart and they can be pretty vicious. You won’t be able to hear the end of it if you’re caught red-handed.”

 

And with a little chuckle, one of the most promising up-and-coming neurosurgeons left his companion behind to attend to some paperwork that he had ignored all day.

 

* * *

 

The next time Satsuki’s eyes fluttered open, she was once again staring at that same ceiling she was starting to get familiar with seeing.

 

She couldn’t say this was a tradition she cared much to continue.

 

Her mind was once again foggy and she felt like her limbs weighted a ton when she tried to push herself up into a sitting position on her bed.

 

Once her covers started rustling, alerting her visitors that she was awake, the pink-haired young woman noticed that she did, in fact, have visitors.

 

Two very familiar, fond faces turned to look at her as she sat up in her bed.

 

Her expression bloomed into a smile as she looked at the two of them.

 

“Mom, dad!” she exclaimed.

 

Her mother, ever the emotional one, choked on the tears that had sprung in her eyes and threw her arms around her daughter, hugging the younger woman close to herself. Satsuki hugged her mother back and allowed herself to sink into the woman’s embrace, a strange feeling that everything was going to be all right now that her parents were there with her washing over her.

 

“Oh, honey, are you okay?!” her mother asked her urgently when she pulled away from the hug. She started scanning her offspring from head to toe—or, rather, what little of her she _could_ scan—for damage. “We heard about the accident and we got here as fast as we could.”

 

Just as her mother said that, her father came by closer to her bed, patting her head in an affectionate manner.

 

“Look at you, all bruised and battered, but still kicking enough to need the doctors to sedate you,” the man said with a large, adoring smile as he petted her hair. “That’s my girl.”

 

And all of a sudden, being surrounded by the two people she had always relied on in her life whenever the tough got going, Satsuki couldn’t help the tears that welled in her eyes as well.

 

As she broke down, clinging to her mother—who got alarmed by her outburst and started rubbing comforting circles into her back, asking her what was wrong—Satsuki knew that everything would be all right, no matter how bleak and dark things seemed right now.

 

The pink-haired woman was so taken with hugging and talking to her parents—a beaming smile on her face—that she didn’t notice the tall figure lurking by the door to her room.

 

She didn’t see him standing there, but he did see the idyll that they made. With a deep sigh, he stalked away from the door, deciding not to intrude on a family moment he knew he would be excluded from as long as she continued not remembering him…

 

* * *

 

Being surrounded by her family made Satsuki feel a lot more at ease. With them, she felt like nothing could go wrong. They had always been her support and her two heroes who had watched over her and brought her up to be the person she was.

 

So, when her mother raised a topic she honestly did _not_ want to talk about, Satsuki was more than a little miffed.

 

“Honey, where’s Dai-chan?” her mother asked, looking around her room for the first time since her girl had woken up. “We thought we’d meet him here, at your side, but we haven’t seen him since we arrived.”

 

Satsuki’s brow furrowed in confusion. Who the hell was _Dai-chan_?

 

When she vocalized that very thought, both her parents looked at her as though she had grown an extra head on her shoulders. Seriously, what was it with all these people and being so shocked to have her say things like that? Yes, okay, she got it the first time—it was _surprising_ , but did they all really have to take it so much to heart? What was with the theatrics? Enough already…

 

“Your… husband, dear?” her mother suggested tentatively, making Satsuki face fault again.

 

Ah, yes, of _course_. Once again, this was all about _that guy_.

 

“Can we please not talk about him right now?” And she was feeling so great till just right then, too… “I’m not really comfortable with this whole thing still,” she grumbled, smoothing out the wrinkles in her covers.

 

In having her head bowed down as she looked at her hand’s ministrations, she missed the meaningful look that her parents shared between themselves.

 

“Did you two have a fight?” her father inquired suspiciously, a bit taken aback at the notion of how it was physically possible for Daiki—the only man who loved his daughter as much as he himself did—to get mad at this precious little treasure just after her life had been in danger.

 

When she shook her head, her exquisite long tresses of bubble-gum pink hair rustled in the movement, her parents felt even more confused.

 

“Look, I know this will be weird to you guys, too, but… When I woke up, even though it seems that everything else is fine with me, they said I completely forgot all my memories about that man. And, frankly, it’s a bit weird to have a husband I don’t even remember getting married to, so I really don’t like talking much about this. Okay?”

 

The mask of shock on her mother’s face was so exaggerated that Satsuki felt the need to heave a great sigh. The elder woman shook her head to rid herself of the grimace. She forced herself to compose her wit some while her husband exhaled deeply and ventured towards the door.

 

“I think I’ll go get something to drink. Would you two like something as well?” he asked them when he opened the door. A chorus of ‘no, thanks’ was heard from inside before he closed the door behind him.

 

When he turned around to face front again, his gaze was met with something—or someone—he hadn’t seen in a few days.

 

Mr Momoi’s eyes softened when he took in the sight in front of him.

 

“Daiki,” he greeted good-naturedly, bowing his chin slightly to the younger man.

 

The addressed bowed his head slightly in recognition as well, still staying seated in the chair just across from his wife’s hospital room.

 

“Uncle,” he returned the greeting, waiting for the other man to buy his drink from the vending machine before sitting down in the chair next to him. “How is she doing?” Daiki asked at last the question that was the only thing on his mind since he arrived in this building.

 

“She’s doing great. Your friend, her doctor, said there was nothing to worry about, too. They’re keeping her here for a couple more days just to make sure that everything is really good before they let her go home.”

 

The taller man nodded his head slowly, leaning even further forward against his elbows rested on his legs. Mr Momoi watched him closely, a sigh tearing from his chest as he looked at the boy who has always been like a son to him even before he married his daughter.

 

He had known the boy his entire life, and it didn’t take him much time to notice the creases of worry—quite atypical for a boy as carefree as Daiki—on the younger male’s forehead.

 

“But that’s not really what you wanted to know about, is it?”

 

At the curious look from the pair of cerulean eyes his way, Mr Momoi elaborated, even though it pained him to say it himself out loud.

 

“She told us about it. How she… doesn’t remember you.”

 

Daiki chuckled mirthlessly at that.

 

“So she still doesn’t after waking up, huh?” Mr Momoi shook his head dejectedly. Daiki smirked without even a sliver of amusement in the expression as he leaned back into his chair’s backrest. “Of course not. It was stupid to expect that something would change when she woke up again.”

 

The older man felt his heart going out to the other, especially at the barely controlled helplessness that was seeping into his voice.

 

“What did her doctor say?”

 

“He said it was probably temporary,” Daiki told the man with a sigh, combing his hair back with callused fingers. “He also said they had never seen this happen before, so there was very little he could tell me or give me guarantees for.”

 

Mr Momoi’s lips set in a firm scowl at that. He put the can of juice in his left hand so that he could place the right on Daiki’s shoulder, giving it a firm, reassuring squeeze.

 

They spent the rest of their time in loaded silence.

 

* * *

 

Satsuki didn’t really expect any of them to understand. Hell, she was the one experiencing it, and she had a hard time wrapping her mind around it.

 

However, the fact remained that she had no recollections of a person whom everyone seemed so worried about every time she said she didn’t remember him. At first, it was creepy—like she was part of some sick set-up where they were pulling off a very elaborate prank on her.

 

But the more and more people reacted instantaneously the same way, the more unnerving it became. Every single one of them looked at her as though she were the bad guy here—forgetting about poor little _Dai-chan_ —what kind of nickname was _that_ , anyway, for a man almost 2 meters tall and super broad in the shoulders? Come on…

 

She wasn’t going to deny that it probably felt really unpleasant being the one forgotten—she couldn’t even imagine that.

 

Still, the fact remained that she was the one who had survived a really gruesome accident! She was the one who had been through hell and back, and yet, here she was, her own mother, giving her that same look as when she had left the class hamster in kindergarten without food because it had bitten her the same day.

 

Satsuki was _not_ the bad guy in this picture. And she hated being made out to be, because she was a victim in this scenario. Having all of these people poking and prodding at her head constantly did nothing to soothe her either.

 

And being the recipient of such judgemental looks was definitely not helping her any either.

 

They didn’t understand what it felt like to open your eyes one day and have every single person you care about tell you that you have a husband you’ve never even seen before in your life. Have them not only tell you that, but insist on it, too—as though she had some kind of obligation to remember him just because they wanted her to.   
  
As though it was possible to remember someone you have never met.

 

Maybe they were all right and she was being cruel, having forgotten him—but it’s not like she had done it on purpose, you know?! So why couldn’t any of those people understand and just _back off a little, okay?_ Sick person recuperating here!

 

“Oh, honey…” her mother said affectionately, hugging her into her frame after her outburst. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that… Dai-chan has always been like a son to your father and I, and you guys have been so happy lately that seeing something like this come between you… It just gets to us in a way I can’t explain, you know?”

 

Mrs Momoi rubbed her daughter’s back while the girl eased her head on her mother’s shoulder. She sniffled loudly as she held on to the woman’s frame.

 

After that, they talked about everything else that mattered and didn’t, her mother trying to make amends for upsetting her. When Satsuki’s father came back into her room, the smile on his face was just a bit more solemn than she remembered it, but the pink-haired woman didn’t let that bother her too much.

 

Her parents stayed until visiting hours were over.

 

Once they left her on her own, Satsuki felt more than ever how bleak and unimpressive hospital rooms were. She was flattered to have one all to herself, but that also meant that she had no one else to talk to when her mom and dad had to leave.

 

The silence kept stretching, and even the small talk she did with the nurses that came in to check on her did very little to distract her. What was worse than being all alone in a bland premise with barely anything in it was the nagging feeling in the back of her head that something was wrong, that this was not all right for some reason—a feeling she could neither place nor fix. It was absolutely maddening.

 

On his last visit for the day to her, she shared that feeling with Midorima who peered at her curiously through his spectacles. He gave her a thoughtful hum while he put her chart back in its holder at the foot of her bed.

 

“It’s probably just anxiety from having to stay over in here for a few days, or from the shock of the crash. It should be gone soon,” he told her easily as he got up from his seat at the side of her bed.

 

Midorin was a poor liar and she could always tell when he was trying to fool her, so how come that now—even though she didn’t get the feeling he was lying to her—she didn’t feel like what he was telling her was the truth?

 

“It’s been a really tiring day for you,” he told her coolly, pushing his glasses up with two fingers. “You should try to get some rest so you can replenish your energy.”

 

Satsuki sighed but did as told, nestling a bit more comfortably into her covers.

 

She had no idea how long she’d slept—or if she even had to begin with—but she did know that the next time she opened her eyes, the room was painted in the orange-reddish hues of the sunset. She let out a sigh as she got up in her bed.

 

Her sleepy mind barely registered the rustle in the room before the door opened. She threw a bleary glance towards whoever had been in the room—expecting to see the back of a nurse’s uniform, or maybe even Midorin’s white coat—but her eyes widened slightly at the back that greeted her when she turned to look.

 

“Wait!” she all but shouted before she could think what she would say should he heed her words.

 

And heed them he did, because Daiki halted his step of walking out her door the moment she spoke.

 

He stopped and turned to look at her over his shoulder. He looked at her expectantly, an unreadable look on his face as he did.

 

Satsuki swallowed, blinking her slumber away as best as she could as she processed what exactly she could say in this situation—and even if she wanted to say anything.

 

Better yet, wasn’t him leaving what she would’ve preferred?

 

Still, a distant part of her whispered in her ear that it was mean to just make him leave because she didn’t feel entirely comfortable around him. And, besides, from the looks of it, he had stayed by her side the entire time she had been asleep—chasing him out now that she was awake seemed more than a bit rude.

 

“You don’t have to go,” she told him quietly as she sat up in her bed.

 

To his credit, Daiki continued wearing the same impassive façade even after she said that.

 

“I’d rather not disturb you,” he told her evenly while she shook her head.

 

“You’re not. Just… come in. Sit down.”

 

He stayed by the door a while longer, watching her intently the whole time. Finally, he relented with a sigh, closing the door and moving around the room to sit next to her bed again. He wasn’t looking at her and she noticed that only out of the corner of her eye because she refused to look at him either.

 

Now what?

 

“I thought you left earlier,” she spoke at last, grappling for a topic.

 

“I just went to get some air. Shit was starting to move too fast for me, so I had to get a breather.”

 

She made a thoughtful hum and this time she allowed herself to turn to look at him. Now that she was, she noticed that he was a rather handsome man. The thoughtful crease of his brow gave him an almost regal look.

 

“You were here the entire time?” she asked, curious. He sighed.

 

“Of course I was.” His gaze shifted to look out her window to his side. “Even though I’m nobody to you right now, and the thought we were married throws you off, to me you’re still my wife—the person who matters the most to me. And I still care what happens to you. There’s no way I can just go home and act as if everything is cool, when you’re in here, bedridden.”

 

Satsuki bit her lip at his words, eyes downcast as she clasped her hands in her lap. She really had no idea how to answer that. Here she had been, begrudging him her own forgetfulness, when he had been thinking only about her the entire time.

 

Pinning her gaze to her fingers kept the pink-haired woman from noticing the long and meaningful sideways glance her spouse threw her out of the corner of his sharp eyes.

 

“Midorima said this would be temporary. But the fact is that, to you, right now, in this room, I’m just a stranger who keeps saying things that make no sense to you, right?” he asked in a stony tone.

 

She nodded and moved her gaze to look up at him through thick eyelashes. Only when she did so then did she notice the heaviness in his shoulders and the slight slump in his back. The weariness and exhaustion were coming off of him in waves.

 

“Well, even though I’d like nothing but to get back to my normal life before this happened, if it means having you doubling over in pain like you did earlier, I’d rather you stopped trying to remember.”

 

Satsuki’s eyes widened at that and she turned her face fully towards him at that. She could tell by the pained expression on his face that it had taken him a lot to say that.

 

The searching look was all she managed, because, really, what _could_ she say? Especially after such a statement.

 

Daiki caught sight of her nonplus and amazement written so clearly on her face. He sighed deeply once again—for the umpteenth time that day—and ran his hand through his hair.

 

“Look, I’m not going to say that I get what you must be going through with this, because I don’t. I have no idea what it’s like. But I can tell you that being on the flip side of this coin is just as shitty and I can only imagine how crappy it must be to be the one whom everyone is telling what feels like tailed lies.”

 

He leaned back into the chair, pushing it on its hind legs as he continued staring out the window.

 

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, so I’ll try to stop saying things that make you feel that way. All I ask is that you trust me when I say that what matters to me most is that you’re all right and well cared for. Can you do that?”

 

The expectant look he threw her then made her straighten her spine before a slow smile spread on her face.

 

She nodded.

 

“Thank you, Aomine-san,” she said with a smile, oblivious to the damage the formality of her address was dealing to the poor man next to her.

 

But instead of letting his disdain show on his face, Daiki leaned forward on his elbow propped on his leg again, chin resting on top of his hand as he gave her the most heart-breaking smile she had ever seen on anyone’s face. She’d never seen a smile so sincere and sad at the same time.

 

It made her feel like a horrible person for making someone who seemed so nice make such an expression.

 

“Well, I guess this is what they mean when they say ‘In sickness and in health’, right?”

 

As the last rays of the sun reflected off the surface of the gold band on his ring finger, Satsuki wished she could remember who this person was. And not just because it would stop people from looking at her as though she were the villain in this situation.

 

No—she wanted to know who he was because she didn’t think there was another person in the entire universe who could look in so much pain and still do his best to smile in front of her and be supportive even though it was obvious to her it was killing him inside.


	3. Part Three

_“I give up!” she wailed in despair, throwing the wooden spoon into the sink._

_She proceeded to prostrate herself in a boneless heap over their dinner table, forehead resting upon its cool surface and beautiful long tresses of hair veiling her face from view._

_Having her face buried into the table like that prevented her from seeing the half-amused, half-pitying tilt of the eyebrow of the man standing next to her on the stove, the other wooden spoon still raised to his mouth._

_He chuckled low in his throat as he looked at her pathetic state. He put the other wooden spoon away as well before resting his back against the kitchen counter while looking at her sagely._

_“It’s true that this one is a lost cause. But we can keep trying to make it together until you learn how to do it properly,” he said in a voice that was low in pitch, kind and familiar: a heart-warming timber._

_His words made Satsuki pick her head up from the table, throwing him the most adorable pout ever. She was just the most precious thing in the world sitting there, her nose slightly red, her eyes wide and begging, her lips set into a lovable grimace of disbelief and hopefulness._

_“You’d be really okay with that?” she asked in a teary voice._

_It took every ounce of self-control he had to keep himself from laughing at her tone._

_“Sure,” he agreed good-naturedly with a shrug. “It’s just miso soup and rice. I’m sure it won’t take you_ that _long to figure it out!”_

_Her face bloomed into the most beaming smile he had seen on her face in a while before she flung herself at him, hugging him around the waist and burying her face in his chest as she cried out his name in adoration._

_He chuckled again and patted her head fondly before he proceeded to go through the motions of how miso soup should be made together with her._

_And although it took them an entire evening until she produced something that was edible and without a doubt could be labelled “miso soup” and rice from the rice cooker, he most certainly kept his promise to her._

_That was the first night when they ate dinner prepared by her—at least, the first time they did not end up getting food poisoning at all after eating one of her dishes._

* * *

 

Satsuki’s eyes fluttered open slowly, a long exhale coming out of her nose as reality and the present of the unfamiliar white ceiling above settled into her sleepy mind.

 

It took her a moment to shake herself from how realistic and… _nostalgic_ that dream had felt. It seemed so real that she could almost feel like it had happened to her before, even though she couldn’t put her finger on when and why.

 

The remnants of her slumber started to wear off faster when she started taking in her surroundings. Her hospital room was still dark as the sun had yet to rise over the horizon.

 

The scanning movements of her eyes halted when her gaze swept over the fitfully sleeping figure in the chair next to her bed. Her eyes widened slowly when realization that he had stayed by her side the entire evening finally dawned on her.

 

The position the navy-haired guy was sleeping in seemed extremely uncomfortable. His discomfort was further aided by the fact his overlong limbs and body needed to slump in a very odd position for him to be able to fit in that chair—which was definitely not intended to accommodate people as huge as him, and most certainly not accommodate them for sleeping.

 

And yet, as she watched him, head askew in a way that would make his neck hurt when he woke up, arms crossed over his chest and legs sprawled out under her bed, lips just a bit ajar, she couldn’t help feeling a stab of that earlier fondness from her dream wash over her as she looked at him.

 

She noticed that, when he wasn’t frowning, he looked even more dashing.

 

She shook her head to rid herself of such a ridiculous train of thought. She also reminded herself that staring at someone in their sleep was more than a little creepy, and she didn’t want to end up being a creep.

  
So she directed her gaze away from him and turned to her side (shameful as it was to admit, so that she wouldn’t feel tempted to let her eyes wander to his peacefully sleeping form again), hoping to get some more sleep despite the dull throb she felt in her chest ever since noticing him in her room.

 

* * *

 

Takao noticed the presence of someone else besides him in the vicinity only once file cabinets started slamming open and closed, their contents handled roughly.

 

The man lifted up his raven haired head to see who was making the commotion to see the last person he would have expected rummaging through the cabinets and drawers in his own office, looking for something.

 

“Daiki!” he enthused, taking the several strides into the room hastily. “Morning! Didn’t expect to see you back so soon.”

 

Daiki’s azure eyes lifted sluggishly to give Takao the most lacklustre expression he’d seen on the other’s face in a while, and the shorter man had to stifle a cackle when his friend yawned so widely it looked like his jaws might unhinge.

 

“Mornin’, Kazu,” he greeted unamused. “You seem peppy as usual—I’ll never figure out how you manage to find so much energy so early in the day…”

 

Kazunari grinned wolfishly at the comment, making Daiki shake his head in disbelief at the other man.

 

“Yep, and it never ceases to amuse me how bad you are at handling mornings.” His grin faded a little while he watched Daiki go in what seemed autopilot through the stacks of papers and files on his desk. “How’s the missus?” he asked tentatively, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. “Shin-chan came home really late last night, but he texted me earlier saying everything is okay with her?”

 

Daiki grunted in noncommittal agreement as he finally got the files he needed neatly stacked on his desk top.

 

“Yes, physically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with her,” the former Touou ace allowed, eyeing the papers critically before making a grimace. “She’s staying over for surveillance at the hospital for another two days. She gets to come home after that.”

 

Kazunari’s brows furrowed in confusion as he continued studying his colleague’s stature and hunched posture.

 

“I don’t understand—isn’t that supposed to be good news?” He scratched his cheek in nonplus, throwing a curious glance at the files Daiki stacked together. “Where are you taking those?”

 

“I came by to tell the boss I needed a few days off, but I’ll take these files to keep myself busy while I stay at the hospital—God knows how crazy I’ll go if all I get to do is watch afternoon soaps at the lobby the entire time.” Aomine shook his head at the mere idea of that happening.

 

Kazunari clicked his tongue in disbelief while he watched Daiki’s retreating back going closer towards the office elevator.

 

“Never knew you to be such a workaholic, Aomine-san,” he commented sarcastically with a grin, further amused by the dramatic roll of his friend’s eyes in response.

 

“Knock it off with the ‘Aomine-san’, please—I’ve heard enough of it these past few days to last me a lifetime,” he grumbled ill-temperedly while the doors to the elevator opened. He stepped into it before turning around to look at his colleague. “Feel free to drop by after work—it will make Satsuki happy.”

 

“I’ll see what I can do about it,” Takao promised before the elevator doors closed, taking Daiki down.

 

The former Shuutoku player heaved a great sigh as he walked back to his office and sat himself heavily into the cushiony seat of his chair.

 

“Never mind being such a workaholic – I had no idea you actually had it in you to completely ignore a question as nonchalantly as that, Daiki,” Kazunari observed, wondering just what was going on in that hospital that kept his boyfriend from coming home on time and which kept Daiki so on edge when he talked about his beloved wife.

 

* * *

 

Over the course of the next two days, more and more people came through Satsuki’s hospital room.

 

All of them friends of theirs from high school and colleagues of hers from work, just dropping by to check on her, make sure she was okay and wish her to get well soon.

 

And even though after their conversation the first evening of her stay he didn’t feel like he was banned from staying in her room anymore, there was an indescribable feeling of excruciating pain, bitter disappointment and strangling envy in Daiki’s chest when she recognized, _without pause_ , every single one of her visitors.

 

She even recognized Ryouta’s boyfriend, Yukio, whom they’d met a grand total of five or six times in their entire lives.

 

Although he was very glad to know that having all these people who meant so much to her come by and check up on her, with every following one that came in and she grinned widely and greeted with their name—or the pet name she had for them ( _she even remembered her pet names for them, for God’s sake_ )—Daiki felt like a little part of him died.

 

Still, he gritted his teeth and swallowed down the stifling feelings that raged inside of him in response to it. He had promised her he wasn’t going to do anything stupid or crazy, or say anything that would make her uncomfortable.

 

So he was definitely _not_ going to make a scene about the fact she remembered Ryou and his ridiculous apologizing, but couldn’t remember _him_ , the man she got married to and shared a bed with.

 

* * *

 

Time passed by in what seemed like a blur. At first, she felt like the minutes and hours were dragging on and on, having nothing to do at the hospital to fill her time at all.

 

And then Aomine-san showed up with a few of her favourite novels, leaving them in her room for her to read and amuse herself with, and then suddenly she wasn’t as bored out of her mind as she used to be.

 

It definitely helped that when the time came by for people to get out of work, she got a lot of visitors. She’d never go so far as to call it a blessing in disguise—because this accident was nothing short of a horror film for her in many senses—but getting to meet some people she hadn’t seen in forever—like Kagamin and Tetsu-kun, and even Ki-chan found time in his busy schedule to drop by and wish her well—wasn’t half bad.

 

Getting to spend some time away from work and stress and _life_ was definitely quite refreshing as well.

 

So, when the time came for her to get checked out of her room, having all her belongings handed back to her and shown the door back to reality, she couldn’t help but feel a little reluctant to take the road.

 

This was why she lingered a bit at the reception desk, going through the bag that held all of her personal belongings that they had put away when they had hospitalized her.

 

Her handbag was a mess—it was barely recognizable from all the tears and filth all over it. She guessed she could use another one sometime soon. Her phone was scratched and battered, but she found with surprise that it was still properly working.

 

When she unlocked its keyboard, she found that she had several dozen messages for missed calls and texts from friends and her family from the day of her accident. She smiled fondly at the contraption, checking through all the messages before closing all menus and going to her phone’s standby.

 

She stilled completely when she did.

 

Because, there, as a wallpaper on her cell phone—her personal phone which, without a doubt, she was the only one handling—was a picture of her and the man who assured her was her husband.

 

And, looking at the picture, there was little doubt in her mind that what she saw on it were two people deeply in mutual love with one another.

 

From the setting behind them, Satsuki guessed that they were in the booth of some kind of diner. They were pressed up together, one of her arms around his shoulders as he leaned up against her with a pleased smirk and an amused quirk of his brow. To his side, she was grinning like a lunatic, her lips pressing up against his cheek and her other hand extended as far as it would go as she took a two-shot of them on her own.

 

It was the perfect picture of a pair of idiots being idiotic together, she had to say.

 

But what she found flooring was how endearing and _happy_ they both seemed in it.

 

Of course, it was just a stupid, badly-made snapshot—she could see that. But there was something very authentic to how real it all seemed.

 

It made her feel terrible for feeling like this had to be some kind of body double of hers next to the man in that picture.

 

Because there wasn’t even a smidgeon of that girl left within her—at least not when it came to him.

 

The last item she took out of the bag was a golden wedding band which they must’ve taken off her finger before rushing her to the emergency room. It was covered in dirt and blood, so she wiped it clean the hem of her shirt before taking a good, long look at it.

 

“You ready?” a voice asked next to her suddenly, snapping her out of her reverie with a start.

 

She almost dropped the ring in her startling.

 

“Yes,” she answered pleasantly with the closest thing to a smile she could manage in that moment. She closed her fingers around the wedding ring, hiding it from view of Daiki who had all the things that were hers from her hospital room. “I’m good to go,” she reaffirmed with a more convincing smile that he reciprocated weakly before heading out the double doors of the hospital.

 

As she strode onward after him, Satsuki could almost swear that the tiny weight of the ring in her hand had multiplied a thousand times over and placed itself heavily like a big boulder over her chest.

 

* * *

 

It was really disconcerting how familiar and yet _not_ her own apartment felt to her once she set foot over its threshold.

 

Her mind got very, very foggy every time she tried to remember why she even got this place to begin with, when she first moved in there and about her everyday life in it.

 

And yet, as she entered and looked around the premises, her hands and feet found their way as though entirely on their own.

 

She knew exactly where to place the keys, and where she usually put her purse after coming home. She knew exactly where to find the remote and the place where she sat on the couch felt so comfortingly familiar it was like a refuge from the cloudiness of her mind.

 

Daiki watched her thread into their apartment slowly, looking around as though she were inside for the first time and he felt apprehensive, unsure what to expect. He set down the box with her books and mp3 player, watching her intently as she sat down and made herself at home.

 

After a couple of minutes passed during which he relieved himself of his coat and went to check if they had anything fit for dinner—now that he was home, he felt kind of starving—and she finally seemed to get a grasp of reality, she turned to send him a querying glance.

 

“What?” He asked her, as non-defensively as he could muster, when she continued staring intently at him while he got himself a beer from the fridge.

 

She took a second longer, rolling the words around in her mouth before she phrased them, pondering the best way to string her sentence together.

 

“You said we’re married… right?”

 

Keeping his face neutral at hearing that kind of question from that particular mouth was a more trying task than Daiki was willing to admit.

 

“Yes, we are,” he concurred as expressionlessly as he could manage.

 

“So _this_ … isn’t _my_ place, is it?”

 

He blinked several times at her before setting the beer with his hand wrapped around it against the kitchen counter. She lost him completely there—he had no clue what she meant with that.

 

His bemusement must’ve shown on his face because it prompted her to elaborate, just as tentatively and uncertainly.

 

“It’s… _our_ place?”

 

Daiki’s brows rose as understanding dawned upon him. He would’ve laughed at her question if this wasn’t all so _fucking tragic_ for him.  

 

“Yes,” he confirmed, making it now her turn for her brows to rise in understanding. “I live here,” he said, vaguely toasting her with his beer before he took several large gulps of it to drown out the desire to fling himself off their balcony.

 

If Daiki thought that they were off to a shaky start with that first conversation, he had to wait till it was time to go to sleep to take part in _the_ most ridiculous conversation in his entire life.

 

It was funny because his lawfully wedded wife insinuated with her overall attitude and entire body language that she fully expected him to sleep on the couch or that she would—just a long as they didn’t sleep in the same room.

 

See, it’s funny, because it _isn’t funny at all_.

 

* * *

 

Over the course of the next week, Aomine Daiki learnt a lot about character and its growth in the face of adversity.

 

In fact, he was quite certain that he was the only man in the history of men who had achieved such impressive growth in his life.

 

After all, it took a tremendous amount of strength and it was definitely a humongous accomplishment to be able to act as though life is going perfectly well and everything is normal as normal could be. Especially when at the same time the woman you love walks around as though on eggshells when around you, barely strikes up any conversation, and is overall ridiculously awkward whenever you take it upon yourself to try to talk with her.

 

Yes—Daiki considered it a very impressive feat that in the week they had been sharing their apartment like strangers, she had exchanged a grand total of about an hour’s worth of nonsensical small talk with him.

 

He thought himself something of a hero for allowing her to have as much space as she needed, trying not to bother her overly with anything he did so as not to seem like he was invading her comfort bubble. Whenever he tried to talk to her and was met with the brick wall of her discomfort with being around him, he sighed and busied himself with something else entirely, making a show of how avidly interested in whatever it was, so as not to give her the impression that he was eagerly desiring her companionship or something.

 

Even though he very much was.

 

Frankly, it was killing him to have her there, in the same apartment, sharing the same space with him as always, but being so untypically distant and cold.

 

The situation was even further complicated by his habitual reactions to her, like turning to kiss her when she hovered around the kitchen while he made dinner.

 

It was just a silly thing he felt compelled to do ever since it became kind of a ritual of his. After they found out that it would be much easier if he were the one taking care of dinner, she’d let him do his magic in the kitchen for a while before dropping by to ask what he was making.

 

And instead of answering her, he’d grin at her and lean down, apron hanging from his neck and around his torso, as he pressed a chaste kiss to her lips before turning back to the stove or hot plate, resuming his cooking and telling her that she’d just have to wait and see.

 

When she came by the third night, asking him what he had planned for dinner and if he needed any help, what ultimately stopped him from taking that kiss he habitually leaned in for was the shocked widening of her eyes to the sizes of saucers and the stiff pose her body froze into when he invaded her personal space.

 

He stopped himself, a few inches away from her face. He realized his lapse a little too late, swallowing loudly before retracting his head from her vicinity with an uncomfortable clearing of his throat.

 

“No, I’m good here,” he told her in an unusually quiet voice as he continued stirring the dish in the frying pan.

 

Satsuki nodded numbly and turned on her heel to return to the living room, nervously awaiting dinner, but already tasting her jitteriness that would definitely diminish her appetite.

 

If Daiki thought she had been awkward before, after _that_ incident he doubted there was a proper adjective to describe how she felt around him.

 

* * *

 

The navy-haired man put his cup of coffee on the corner of his desk, dropping a large stack of papers smack in the middle of it, before plopping down into his seat and letting his upper body slump lifelessly over the mahogany of his work station. He stayed like that for a moment, during which Takao eyed him with an amused eyebrow raised.

 

Then he lifted his head off the desk just far enough for it to fall against it with a dull thump when he let it descend again. Kazunari’s attempt to bite back the laughter bubbling in his throat was courageous but after a few more repeats of the action, he recognized the lost cause for what it was, chortling like a moron as he let himself inside Aomine’s office.

 

“Wow—did you just hit rock bottom of the sucky mornings, or what?” he said jokingly, seating himself across from Daiki in another chair.

 

“My back is so stiff and cramped that I can barely walk normally, I sleep so little I might as well be turning into a zombie or a vampire, and I am so sexually frustrated a strong breeze is probably all it will take to get me going,” Daiki’s muffled voice against the desk’s wooden top said in a tone of theatrical despair. “So, yeah, I think I just hit the rock bottom of sucky mornings.”

 

Daiki lifted his head off the desk—a small red bump forming on his forehead where he had been abusing it—and a sardonic look was plastered on his face as he waited for Takao to get over his laughing fit.

 

It was taking the smaller man a lot longer than the former Touou ace was willing to allow him.

 

“I’m glad my misery is amusing you so, you asshole,” he grumbled in displeasure, reaching out for his coffee in hopes of finding some consolation in it.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” his colleague said while wiping a tear away. Daiki rolled his eyes in a perfect demonstration of how convinced he was in the sincerity of Takao’s apologies. “It’s just—” he snorted a laugh as he got close to another fit.

 

Daiki’s glare got so severe the raven-haired man started worrying it just might end up killing him in the end.

 

“I had no idea it was that bad, man,” he said, barely stifling his outburst, and ending up giggling like a schoolgirl instead.

 

Sharp azure orbs fixed upon him with a soul-searing intensity.

 

“It’s _worse_ ,” he admitted, taking a large gulp of his coffee. “I’ve been sleeping on the couch for a week and, let me tell you—that couch was _not_ made for someone of my size sleeping on it. And I _don’t_ mean that in a good way.”

 

Takao made a commiserating grimace.

 

“This whole set up is really driving me nuts, Kazu,” he all but whined pitifully as he put his head against the desk again. “My woman will barely even _look_ at me, let alone _talk_ to me or stay in the same room as me. She acts as though I’m some kind of stranger the entire time and it fucking _stings_ , you know?!”

 

His friend sighed and all traces of mirth started leaving him when he realized how truly disillusioned his colleague was starting to get with the situation at home.

 

“And to make things worse, after that time I almost kissed her, she acts as though I might end up assaulting her or something and always keeps at least more than an arm’s reach away from me.”

 

A morbid chuckle tore from Takao’s chest at that and he shook his head.

 

“That must be such a bummer, man,” he agreed sadly.

 

“No—what’s a real bummer is your lover taking all of their fucking change of clothes and towel into the bathroom so that they don’t need  to walk around the apartment in any state of undress because you make them uncomfortable— _that_ , my friend, _is a bummer_.”

 

Kazunari hissed through his clenched teeth with another grimace before reaching over to pat Daiki’s shoulder.

 

“Hang in there, champ. Soon this will be a story you will both be laughing over and telling others as ‘Remember that time, when…’ – you’ll see,” he told Daiki with a small smile.

 

The taller man looked at him listlessly before reclining back to rest his body against the chair’s back.

 

“That’s just it.” He paused for a while before continuing. “I know that Midorima and all of them big shot doctors said that it will be some time before she remembers but… It’s already been a week and not even a single piece of memory has come back to her in regards to me and us.” He let his gaze wander to the side, a solemn crease forming in his brow. “It makes me wonder if she’ll ever remember anything anymore, you know.”

 

At this, his colleague’s eyebrows furrowed over his sharp eyes before he took a solid hold of Daiki’s shoulder and gave him a little shake.

 

“Hey, hey, Daiki. Listen to me now,” he all but commanded, making his companion’s cerulean gaze shift back to him. Takao’s brow narrowed further at the profound sadness and hopelessness he was met with in them. “This _is_ just temporary. And it _will_ become a story you will laugh over together. I can imagine that it isn’t easy for either of you right now—must be really, really confusing for both of you—but it won’t continue forever. So you just need to grit your teeth and tough this one out. Right?”

 

Frankly, over the past week, Daiki’s patience faculties and abilities to act as though everything was going great were starting to get greatly depleted. However, regardless of how aghast he felt, he couldn’t help but snort a laugh at Takao’s choice of words for cheering him up.

 

When his friend cocked a brow at his reaction, the former Touou student spoke to him with a tiny smile.

 

“Seriously, you guys are ridiculous—Midorima said practically the same thing to me in that hospital,” he said, just a trace of amusement in his voice. “The only thing that was missing was his trademark catch phrase.”

 

Takao laughed at that claim.

 

“What can I say—great minds think alike!” he enthused with a grin, leaning back into his chair but his gaze never parting from Daiki’s wistful expression. “And speaking of great minds, I think I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, as long as you promise not to tell.”

 

His claim made Daiki quirk a sceptical brow in response.

 

Kazunari made a show of leaning in conspiratorially before speaking again.

 

“Shin-chan has been staying up really late nowadays, looking up any cases similar to Satsuki-chan’s. He’s got several really huge tomes he goes through on an almost daily basis, trying to find anything that could be helpful to your situation.”

 

Daiki’s eyes widened while his friend patted his shoulder reassuringly.

 

“Don’t worry, mate—you’re not in this alone.”

 

And even though that was not entirely true—neither of the former Shuutoku duo had to live with a person who was at the same time exactly the person they adored and nothing like them at all—Daiki couldn’t help but feel a bit heartened.

 

If Midorima was not giving up on shedding some light on this phenomenon, he sure as hell wasn’t about to give up on his front either.

 

* * *

 

Living in that apartment together with the man who claimed to be her husband was an incredible farce for Satsuki.

 

The feeling was probably brought on by her incapability to wrap her mind around the notion of her being married to someone she had zero recollections of. And while that was odd and disconcerting, the ease with which he could walk around her, do his everyday things and just be in her presence made Satsuki feel incredibly on edge.

 

It was so, _so weird_. It was like living with a stranger, whom you met on the street and ended up inviting to live with you—whom you met on the street _for the first time_ —yet which stranger knows every single quirk and habit of yours when you’re at home.

 

Whenever she asked for a certain dish for dinner, he always made it in the peculiar way she liked it, or he served things in the peculiar manner she enjoyed the most. He always knew when to get her what, which things to leave where so it would be most comfortable for her to find them afterwards without having to ransack the whole apartment to find them.

 

What was even worse, was the lost and heart-breaking glances he kept throwing her way every time he thought she wasn’t looking and wouldn’t notice.

 

She felt horrible, because he looked so broken and torn whenever he wore that expression, and she sincerely wished she could do something— _anything_ —to make him feel better about things.

 

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t act like she had before because she had no idea how to do it. She had no idea of his likes and dislikes or how to be a good roommate because _she didn’t know him_.

 

And those glances he sent her—full of hope, desire, and pending expectations… She felt like she couldn’t live up to those. The weight of the responsibility wore her down, smothered her.

 

It trapped her voice in her throat and made it impossible for her to talk to him without tripping over her words.

 

What was one supposed to say to one’s husband whom one had never met, but had been madly in love with not even two weeks ago?

 

 _What_?

 

She kept hanging on the promises of the medical folk that this would all be temporary. That her memory would start coming back to her and everything would be fine afterwards.

 

But the more days passed, and the more nothing changed and not even a single recollection came to her, the more dejected Satsuki felt with herself and with everything.

 

It would be temporary—this ridiculously selective amnesia of hers that made that man’s handsome face contort in such pain whenever she talked with her high school friends—but how _long_ was temporary supposed to be, really?

 

Living in this awkward set up, in such a stifling atmosphere, was starting to become more than she could handle.

 

* * *

 

The apartment was littered with memories of their times together.

 

She could tell from the fact that most items in it she didn’t remember. And everyone had already established that the only things she didn’t remember were the ones related to him.

 

There were picture frames of places and people she didn’t recognize. There were souvenirs from places she didn’t remember going to.

 

But worse than those were the pictures of them together in most of the frames, and the fact he felt like he needed to keep her away from seeing those.

 

Every single frame that was just the two of them in the apartment—in the living room, in the bedroom—was put down, facing down, so that she wouldn’t notice it unless she were looking for it in particular.

 

But even though she was at home, Satsuki didn’t feel all that comfortable in the place. So her edginess made her want to rummage around before bed or look around while she was cleaning to quell some of her anxiety.

 

When she did, she always came across objects that made her quirk a brow or just feel outright uncomfortable.

 

Like the big stack of condoms in the top drawer of the nightstand next to the bed.

 

Or the rather provocative and hugely suggestive lingerie she would never consider wearing in her life and yet seemed to fit her curves perfectly.

 

Or the overturned pictures of her and Daiki.

 

Those were all the things that made her feel like an impostor invading somebody else’s home. Because, even though she was the same person, without that batch of memories, she wasn’t really the same.

 

It’s funny, really, she thought, how something like this could change who you are so grandly.

 

The proverbial last straw, however, was when she caught a glimpse of his cell phone when he left it at home when he went to fetch some last-minute ingredients for dinner.

 

It was just a normal phone, but what lured her attention was the vibrancy of the pink on his wallpaper.

 

She barely stifled a little smirk as she reached out to take it. Over the past week he had done a grand job of making himself seem all manly and almost macho-like, constantly having a chip on his shoulder even if his tone was soft-spoken and words carefully selected, but all in all he gave off the feel of an alpha male.

 

Thinking he had something cute and _pink_ on his phone’s wallpaper made her giggle before taking a look at the object.

 

And, just like when she looked at her own phone after getting out of the hospital, her blood froze in her veins when she took a glimpse of it. Her eyes got glued to the screen and her fingers felt numb as she held on to it.

 

There, on his cell phone’s wallpaper, was a picture of her, in one of her prettiest sundresses. There was a breeze in the picture, making her dress billow ephemerally, and she was smiling so brightly and happily as she looked towards the camera with an expression Satsuki was pretty sure she had never seen on her own face in her entire life.

 

That’s when she knew this wasn’t going to work out. Not like this, at least.

 

She wasn’t the girl in this picture anymore. Not right now. Not until she got her wits back together. She couldn’t be the girl in this picture and she couldn’t have such a doting expression because she didn’t know how to anymore.

 

She knew that he was expecting her to snap out of it any moment now, but she couldn’t bear to be the one letting him down like this.

 

This girl looking back at her from the phone’s screen—she wasn’t her. She couldn’t be her. Even though it was without a doubt her, she couldn’t be that person.

 

So when he came back and finished dinner, and they were eating in that same strained silence that she brought with her everywhere she went, Satsuki knew what she needed to do.

 

“Daiki-san,” she started, using the form of address he had insisted in the way he abhorred hearing it (he had told her that if she referred to him as ‘Aomine-san’ just one more time, he might end up feeling very suicidal and that was not good considering they lived on the eighth floor; upon her somewhat unnerved query of how she should call him, he insisted she used his first name, at the very least, a distant part of himself hoping she’d go with “Dai-chan” but not really betting too much on it). “I think we need to talk about something.”

 

Daiki lifted a brow at the statement, resisting the urge to fling back at her a myriad of sarcastic retorts that swum to the forefront of his mind at her statement.

 

“About what?” he settled for instead, finishing his meal as she did hers as well.

 

Satsuki shifted in her seat, obviously feeling disconcerted about the topic—whatever it was.

 

“I know that the doctors said I should stay in the same environment I lived in before the crash in hopes that it will stimulate my memories easier, but…” She bit on her lower lip guiltily, looking away from him as his expression became increasingly voided of any emotion. “This isn’t really working out for either of us. I hate making you sleep on your own couch, because you need to rest. You can’t keep working yourself like this. And…” Her eyes wandered again towards the far end of the room. “Being in this place like this… it feels wrong. It’s like I’m stealing someone else’s place in here and being a bad substitute for them.”

 

Daiki swallowed around the lump that had formed into his throat and tried to act as if he could easily stomach her claim.

 

“It’s not that big of a deal, sleeping on the couch, I mean,” he said with a one-armed shrug. “I’ll survive. Midorima said that feeling strange over the next few weeks is supposed to be normal, so I don’t think you have any reason to be too alarmed—” he tried but she shook her head as she listened to him and he felt his heart sink at the implications of what she was trying to say to him.

 

“Living here like this feels wrong,” she confessed quietly, making a heavy weight drop on Daiki’s chest and back.

 

“Living with me feels wrong to you?” he clarified in an embittered tone. She tightened her hold on the chopsticks she had placed down.

 

“No—living with these grand expectations and the hopeful trepidation that ‘ _Maybe today…!_ ’ is getting too much for me to handle. Being surrounded by all these memories I have no recall for is getting too unsettling. I feel like my own doppelganger in my own home and it’s _not pleasant_.” She enunciated, hoping that her statement would be enough for him to understand what exactly she meant. “I know that this is supposed to be a temporary thing, but being in here doesn’t feel like it’s helping me at all. In fact, I get the feeling that it’s exactly the opposite…”

 

Every subsequent word she spoke killed yet another part of Daiki. Her sentences sunk like daggers into his heart, which rammed fast against his ribcage as his nervousness and anxiety mounted.

 

“So what do you want to do about that, then?” he asked her, chancing a glance up at her for the first time since the topic came up.

 

She locked her gaze with his, feeling shaky and uncertain, but knowing there was no other way than this one—and it was the kinder option, regardless of how cruel and horrible it would probably sound to him when she said it.

 

“I think it would be better if I went back to live with my parents for a while,” she told him evenly, and the only thing that changed in his expression was how much more lifeless and dull his eyes became as he stared back into hers. “Just until I get back on my feet and stop feeling like the sore thumb sticking out.”

 

Her husband took in a deep breath and pulled his right hand to his face. He massaged the bridge of his nose and his brow roughly, trying to fight back the headache he felt coming on.

 

As he did, Satsuki caught a glimpse of the wedding band on his ring finger, and she felt a painful pang stab through her chest. She hated to do this to him when he obviously still believed in her, but she couldn’t be the person who made him uneasy in his own home either. She couldn’t do this to him any longer.

 

After a couple of minutes of strained silence, Daiki nodded numbly and got up from his seat to put the dishes away.

 

“Fine. Okay,” he agreed in the most disenchanted tone she had ever heard from him. “If that’s what you want, I’ll take you to your parents’ house first thing tomorrow.”

 

She nodded stiffly. She tried to give him a smile but it came across as a grimace instead.

 

“Thank you,” she said, feeling grateful and guilty at the same time.

 

He turned so she couldn’t see his face anymore when he responded dully.

 

“Don’t mention it.”

 

* * *

 

The door swung open and the woman who stood behind it felt her eyes widen considerably.

 

“Satsuki!” she exclaimed, hurrying to hug her daughter before she noticed the pink-haired woman’s bag of clothes in her hand. “What do we owe the pleasure? And how come you’re here so early?”

 

Satsuki shook her head with a coy smile before stepping inside the familiar house.

 

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you all about it after I come home from work, if that’s okay?” she asked as she climbed the stairs towards her room. “Hey, is it fine if I crash here for a few days?” she called over her shoulder to her mother, who worried her brow.

 

“Of course, dear, but…” The elder Momoi woman turned her attention to the road in front of her house, noticing for the first time Daiki waiting for her daughter in the car that was still running.

 

The poor boy looked like he had seen better days than the ones he was living now.

 

Mrs Momoi tightened her hand into a fist over the fabric of her shirt’s chest, and she turned just in time to see Satsuki breeze past her and head towards the car.

 

“I’ll see you tonight, okay, mom?” she called out to her mother, while she got into the car.

 

They drove off while Mrs Momoi watched them numbly from her place at the threshold of the house, a dumb expression still plastered on her face.

 

“I really hope those kids will be all right eventually…” she murmured with a sad shake of her head before closing the door to her house.

 

* * *

 

Satsuki was definitely right, she decided as she sank into the comfort of her old bed, feeling soothed by the familiar aroma of her mother’s favourite fabric softener. Coming back to her childhood home had definitely been a good idea—she didn’t feel quite as uneasy in here as she did in her other apartment, and her jitteriness was significantly smaller in here.

 

Besides, there were barely any items in the room she didn’t recognize or had her mind fog over the details of how they got there, so that was definitely a huge plus side.

 

She realized that she was a very lucky girl to have such a supportive and understanding family—even when they couldn’t understand any of what she was going through. She had to make sure to thank them all whenever this whole ordeal was over.

 

As she went to bed that night in the same sheets she had for years growing up, Satsuki had the most worry-free evening in a long time.

 

* * *

 

On the other part of town, an exhausted navy-haired man came into his home, kicking the door shut behind him and swinging the key until the lock clicked.

 

He dragged his feet lazily across the room, discarding his briefcase on the way to the bedroom. He loosened his tie as he advanced before throwing himself face-first into the comfort of the bed he had missed dearly these past few weeks.

 

His nose buried into the pillow and when he breathed in a lungful of it, he regretted allowing himself to be so unguarded just because he was so drained from work and the shit that had been happening to him lately.

 

Because the pillow was so permeated with Satsuki’s delicious scent that it almost made him want to cry.

 

He hadn’t felt that scent in what felt like forever. Thinking back to it, he hadn’t even touched a single strand on her head ever since he had hugged her in the hospital after she had woken up.

 

Overwhelmed by the thought, he buried his face deeper into the covers that smelt like her. He hoped that if he tried hard enough, it would make being swallowed up by the bed possible.

 

But it wasn’t, and there was no easy way out of this. He needed to get himself together and continue pretending like he wasn’t drowning in a sea of sorrow and grief and bitter disappointment for what felt like a lifetime instead of a single week.

 

He needed to tough up and man up and keep all those complicated emotions from showing on his face because he didn’t need people’s pity, he didn’t need their reassurance because nothing they ever said could make feeling like this all right.

 

He needed to get back on top of his game, regardless of how hopelessly he yearned for just a single touch, a single kiss from his girl, to give him the strength to plough through his. He couldn’t hope for such things, and he couldn’t expect her to do them because even though she was Satsuki, she insisted that she wasn’t _his_ Satsuki anymore, no matter how much she looked and talked and acted like her.

 

And as Daiki’s fingers laced through his navy spikes of hair and his short nails sank painfully into his scalp while he held on for dear life, he thought of how unfair and excruciatingly painful all of this was, and he couldn’t help but wonder.

 

He wondered how much longer this agony would drag on and he wondered whether he would be able to keep his sanity intact by the time it was over.


	4. Part Four

When Daiki agreed to let Satsuki stay over at her parents’ home, he did so thinking that even though she slept over elsewhere, he’d still be the one taking her to and from work—like he had ever since they’d both started working in college.

So as she asked him the very next day when he dropped her off to work that he stopped doing this for her, he was grateful she asked after the car was pulled over—otherwise his fingers may have slipped and he could’ve caused another accident.

His reaction was understandable, he believed. It was only the natural kind of reaction a man could have when his wife practically asked him to stay away from her.

Because, essentially, that’s what Satsuki was doing.

She’d backed away into her safety bubble of the house she’d lived in growing up, where his presence in her life was much more minimized, to the comfort of living with her parents where she could find emotional escape from the reality of her everyday life and she had asked him not to show his face to her on a daily basis—because she couldn’t handle dealing with him so frequently. Not in this situation.

And if that wasn’t just the saddest thing that had ever happened to Daiki, he wasn’t sure what was.

For a while after she’d asked him to back off, he did well.

The thought that this stalemate would be over any day now—that her memory would come crashing down to her like an insight—kept him going. He stayed strong, believing everything would be fine, spending as much of his time out with his colleagues after work and with friends from college and high school—delaying as long as possible the return to his depressing, empty apartment.

Being home became something he dreaded. Coming back to the empty apartment where there were only traces of her from before the accident felt excruciating.

So he made a valiant attempt to always tire himself out completely before coming back home from work—making sure that he’d practically pass out the moment his head touched the pillow, not leaving himself any time to brood over what was, what had been and what would be from here on out.

And, for a while, it worked. He thought he was doing great. It was harsh, but he could do this.

He stayed strong, because he believed.

Then the hours without even a word from her turned into days, and the days turned into weeks.

Before he knew it, a month had passed and the only news about her he heard was from his mother who lived next door to the Momois and saw Satsuki on her way back from work every day.

And as time wore on, Daiki’s resolve wore thin. His conviction wavered. Believing this was just temporary became increasingly more difficult.

Funny word, “temporary”. A definitely more hopeful one when juxtaposed with “permanent”.

But not nearly good enough when what you need to happen has to be “any moment now”.

When what you’re waiting for is “any moment now”, “temporary” starts feeling like “forever”.

And as that moment refused to come after weeks and weeks of waiting and yearning and brooding, even Daiki’s impressive mental strength couldn’t keep him standing tall anymore.

He stopped believing that ‘Maybe tomorrow will be different’ because he knew it wouldn’t. He was tired of being disappointed when the following day was the exactly same as the previous. He was tired of acting like everything would be fine, when  _he_  obviously wasn’t fine.

He was tired of clinging onto a chimera of days that would be better.

Because the more time passed, the more unrealistic that thought became. The longer she tried to isolate him from her life, the deeper the chill of his heart and mind became.

He could feel his soul growing cold from drowning in the solitude for too long. He could feel his sanity slipping the more time he went without having her by his side.

It was the first time in his life—in his entire  _existence_ —that he had been so completely separated from her, and for such a long time. He wouldn’t have thought it would affect him this strongly.

But it did.

And it was becoming increasingly more unbearable to live with the more days passed by without her even showing her face to him, without even hearing her voice over the phone.

So the deeper Daiki sank into despair, the more appealing other forms of consolation he wouldn’t have ever turned to in other situations started to seem.

When a month passed and things were still exactly the same—dead-end, depressing and without any end in sight—Daiki started frequenting a bar nearby the apartment more often.

It was a good reprieve from the deafening silence of his apartment—the din in the bar. He could be both surrounded on all sides by people and at the same time be completely alone – a peculiar feeling that somewhat eased his raging heart.

And if that wasn’t enough to numb the suffocating feelings that stifled him mercilessly, the serving after serving of whiskey definitely did the job.

* * *

 

_“My new phone needs a new wallpaper!” she enthused, suddenly drawing the attention of half the diner to herself. “So let’s take a picture!”_

_The man next to her made an incredulous face and his jaw hung open with a sceptical “Haa?”_

_She didn’t let his disgruntled expression faze her at all. Satsuki just grinned and pressed her body up against his, her head hovering over his shoulder as she huddled next to him. Her right hand outstretched to get a two-shot of them together._

_She snapped the photo even while her companion—more like victim, though, if you asked him—could say another word – or pose properly, for that matter._

_She ignored his protests while she merrily retracted her hand to take a look at her handiwork—only to have her eyes narrow comically at the sight that greeted her._

_“Wow, this is harder than I thought,” she admitted as she eyed in distaste how she had practically cropped herself out of the picture, her boyfriend’s ridiculous grimace and outraged posture the only thing visible in her snapshot. “Let’s do this over!”_

_“Err, you know, I_ could _take this picture for you instead,” Kagami said from across the table with a meaningful look on his face._

_Satsuki’s pink gaze turned to briefly acknowledge his offer before she shook her head._

_“No, no! It needs to be self-made for it to be authentic!” she insisted, making the Seirin ace cock an oddly shaped brow at her._

_“Authentic?” he echoed, his complete lack of conviction in her nonsense permeating his tone. Satsuki eyed him evilly while the man next to her finally swallowed down his bite—something she hadn’t allowed him to do before taking that previous picture of them._

_“Yes, authentic! It’s something of a new fad amongst couples these days—to make a self-taken two-shot with your lover and put it on your phone! It’s supposed to bring you luck in love or something like that,” she said dreamily, making both guys on the table with her roll their eyes._

_“Please. You don’t honestly believe such nonsense, do you?” Kagami inquired tersely. She made a small pause as she considered the question, taking a meaningful look at the man sitting next to her in the booth of the diner._

_He was chewing quietly and peering at her curiously, eyes untypically wide and innocent as he waited for her response for Kagami. He blinked when he noticed her staring back at him, and a small smile played across his face after he swallowed._

_“What?” he asked, humour bubbling in his tone._

_The corners of her lips slowly curled into a smile, too, as she hugged his arm that was on her side. She pressed her ample bosom against his side, burying her face into the crook of his shoulder in a (sadly for Kagami and any other person who happened to accompany the two of them anywhere) typical outburst of affection before she replied to either of them._

_“So what if it is nonsense?” she said, angling her head so she could peer into her boy’s face. “And if it isn’t, having a little more luck in love could never hurt anyone, right?”_

_Her lover smirked next to her and shook his head dotingly before scooting a little closer to her and pulling her flush against his frame while she threw her arm around his shoulders. Her other hand extended and she positioned it carefully—with a little guidance from Kagami who peered into the screen for the shot before giving her his thumbs up._

_She grinned and said in a sing-song voice, “Say cheese!” before leaning in to kiss his cheek while her finger sank down to press the shutter of her phone’s camera._

* * *

 

The first evening back at her parents’ home had made Satsuki believe that she had made an excellent decision. Being freed for the first time in more than a week from the feeling that she’s forgetting something, that she’s not enough as she is, was liberating and reassuring.

However, her relief was quite short-lived.

Even though Daiki wasn’t around to make her feel guilty just by simply being  _there_  and looking at her like he was a lost puppy, she still felt like something was amiss.

No one at home pressured her, nor even raised the topic of when she planned on going back to her apartment—or even if she had any plans at all.

And she was grateful for the space they were providing her with—because she really had no plans at all, and it  _horrified_  her.

She was used to knowing what she would do next, how she’d handle whatever may come—plotting all her probable responses to the myriad possible paths that may present themselves to her. So it was really odd not to see any particular path ahead of her at all.

She lived, day for day, without allowing herself to think much about the present, nor the future. They were both still foggy and she felt out of her element, completely at a loss as to what to do.

It definitely didn’t help that she was constantly feeling restless—like there was something in her life that was missing. Like there’s a hole in her chest no amount of talking to her friends and parents, no amount of comfort food nor distractions could fill.

It scared her, because she hated feeling this way. She hated feeling incomplete and lost. Comfort with herself and her life had been something she may have taken for granted, and only now that she had lost them did she realize how precious they had been.

The more days passed without her knowing what to do with herself, the glummer she became and the more impossible to shake the feeling of drowning was.

She felt like she was withering, even though it made no sense to her.

The only solace she found from those feelings was in sleep—more particularly, in her dreams.

The only time when she didn’t feel like she was drowning was when she dreamt—and although her dreams were blurry and she quickly forgot them, what she was left with after she had them was an ephemeral feeling of content and security – feelings she was hard pressed to find in her current state of mind in her reality.

So as the days passed, Satsuki spent more and more of her free time sleeping. If she wasn’t at work, she was at home, in her bed, napping the day away before spending some time with her parents, dining with them and then going back up to her room to turn in for the night.

If her mother and father were worried, they didn’t say anything to her. Instead, they let her have some space for a while, hoping she would get over this obstacle if she only had enough time and energy.

Satsuki was grateful to them for that.

* * *

 

If he thought he was being covert about it, Takao would beg to differ.

He had no idea what was going on with Daiki lately—even though he had a sneaking suspicion what it probably was—but it was starting to show so clearly across his face in the mornings while he came in to work – looking like something had chewed him up and spat him back out – that it alarmed his colleague.

It made Kazunari feel like he should go talk to the taller man and try to offer him some consolation as much as he could give. But Daiki only smiled—in the forlorn, cool and slightly creepy way he had taken to smiling all the time nowadays—and shook his head, thanking him for his concern but waving it off. He made up excuses about having a long and surprisingly lively night before trying to get himself into working gears.

And just before Kazunari could leave him to his own devices, every other day Daiki would invite him for a drink after work. The raven-haired man didn’t dwell much on his offers, sometimes agreeing and sometimes not. Although he was the closest person to the former Touou ace spatially, he spent so much time with him at work and off, it completely evaded his notice.

But Takao couldn’t really be blamed. After all, he had to be paying attention for the signs to be able to recognize them when they showed themselves.

No one had ever thought Daiki would ever find comfort and reassurance at the bottom of the liqueur bottle.

Not even Daiki himself.

* * *

 

Satsuki knew she’d been over the line when her mother ended up making her an appointment with a doctor over her pretty much permanent hypersomnia after some weeks passed.

  
The pink-haired woman ended up having to explain to the specialist for a small eternity that she was fine, she wasn’t depressed and it was just that her body needed some rest now, so who was she to deny it.

Still, once she set foot outside that room, she knew she had to stop running away from her problems.

But most of all, that she needed to stop running away from things in her sleep.

* * *

 

Six weeks after the accident, Satsuki found herself dialling a number by memory that she didn’t even know she had memory of.

It started as a day just like any other. She’d ridden with her father’s car to work, but her parent ended up needing to take it after lunch, so she was left without a means to get home once work was over with for the day.

She had completely forgotten that fact when she’d given him the okay for taking the vehicle. Although, technically, it was  _his_ car, so he could do whatever he wanted with it, but that was just beside the point.

Still feeling a bit iffy about riding in the public transport after what had happened to her not even two months ago, she thought she might as well call up a friend to give her a ride. So she picked up her phone and started pressing in the digits of the first number that came to her mind while she wondered who she should phone in this situation.

She pressed the dial button, thinking that when it stopped ringing, she’d hear her mother’s voice.

“Hello?” a low baritone—nostalgically familiar—and quite certainly masculine responded from the other end of the line.

Satsuki’s eyes widened and her heart leapt in her chest in surprise. Now  _this_  was something she hadn’t meant to happen, nor had she foreseen.

“Oh,” she mumbled, startled, and from the silence that greeted her from the other side, she knew that hearing her voice was just as much of a surprise. “I’m… sorry. I didn’t mean to call you like this. I must’ve… misdialled or something.”

After she said it, she realized how wrong that sounded as well.

To his credit, her interlocutor only cleared his throat—hoping to dispel his discomfort from her statement with it as well—before speaking up again.

“No, it’s fine. I was just… surprised to hear from you again,” he said sincerely, relapsing into a short silence again. “You called because you needed something, right? What’s up?”

She shook her head, even though she was well aware he couldn’t see her.

“No, I couldn’t ask something of you after being so awkward these past few weeks. I’m sorry I bothered you, Daiki-san.” She just opened her mouth to say her goodbyes to him when he stopped her a bit more sternly.

“Come on, don’t be like that,” he chided half-heartedly. “You needed something, and you ended up calling me, so let’s hear what it is and then I’ll tell you if it’s a bother or not – deal?”

She kept quiet, biting on her lower lip in concentration as she mulled over his proposal. She guessed it would only be polite to at the very least tell him why she had called before hanging up.

“Well, I came with my dad’s car to work today, but he had to take it earlier, so I ended up without a ride home,” she explained with a small sigh. “I don’t really want to take the bus since… Well, you know.” She shifted her weight on her other foot, her gaze wandering away guiltily. “So I thought I’d call my mom instead, but somehow I ended up punching in your number instead – funny how that works.”

She smiled at the silliness of the idea, but on the other end of that line, Daiki’s eyes widened in wonder. She dismissed it as a simple mistake, but to him, this sounded like not all hope was lost for this cause—if she could still habitually dial his number when she needed someone to be there for her, then maybe, just  _maybe_ …

He shook his head to rid himself of that train of thought and gave her a stiff little chuckle as well.

“Funny, yeah,” he agreed unconvincingly. “If you’re all right with me driving you there, I won’t mind taking you home—I was just on my way back from a business meeting across town myself.” The reason he hadn’t seen it was her calling was because he was talking to her from his Bluetooth hands free he always used while driving.

If he  _had_  seen it was her calling before picking up, it would’ve taken him much longer than the three rings to pick up while he would’ve tried to steel his nerves. 

Satsuki deliberated his proposal briefly. Well, a fifteen-minute car ride certainly couldn’t  _hurt_  anyone, could it?

“Okay then. Thank you so much,” she told him with a small smile.

“I’ll pick you up in front of your office in ten minutes or so,” he told her before they hung up.

Only after her phone was safely tucked into her pocket did Satsuki realize she never told him where her office was. And only then the discomfort started settling in again.

It nudged out the nervous trepidation equivalent to that of a school girl talking to her crush for the first time on the phone—the feeling she’d had the entire time while her heart was skipping in her chest since the moment she’d heard his voice in the receiver.

* * *

 

They pulled over in the driveway of the Momoi residence after a rather silent and sullen ride to it. Satsuki turned to give him a little smile before reaching for the door handle.

“Thank you,” she said again, and he was starting to wonder if there was anything else she’d ever say to him anymore—except thanks for things she didn’t really need to thank him for.

But instead of voicing those thoughts out loud—regardless how compelling it was—he reciprocated her expression with a lopsided smirk of his own. He nodded at her while she climbed out of the car— _their_ car.

He watched her until she trudged down the lane up to her parents’ house. He watched her back disappear until he could no longer look. He put his hands on the steering wheel and pressed his back further into the driver’s seat.

He stared at the familiar road up ahead and let his mind wander to matters he hadn’t allowed himself to think over the past month.

And just as he was starting to feel like he was suffocating again, a knock at the window startled him back to present time.

His head snapped to the side to direct his attention to what had caused the sound. His eyes widened briefly in surprise when he saw Satsuki once again at the side of the car, a coy smile on her face while he pulled the windows down, so she could speak freely.

“I feel bad making you come all this way and then sending you right back. You should come in and have some coffee with us. I’m sure mom and dad will be thrilled.” She gave him a meaningful long look as she poked her head inside the vehicle. “What do you say?”

He returned her intense stare for a little while as he considered his options. He sighed and gave her a tiny smile of defeat before nodding.

“I could use a little coffee,” he acquiesced.

She grinned and stepped away so he could put the window back up and then lock the car as they strode towards the house.

“Wow, it’s been a while since I came here,” he remarked as a wave of nostalgia at the sight of the all familiar porch smothered him.

Satsuki smiled up from his side and shook her head while she let him in.

“Mom, dad, I’m home!” she called from the doorway as they removed their shoes. “I brought a guest with me, too,” she added as an afterthought.

In looking down at her feet as she put her shoes away neatly, she missed entirely the shadow that flitted across Daiki’s face.

“Over here, dear!” her mother’s voice called from inside the house. “We’re in the living room!”

When Daiki and Satsuki made their way towards the living room, they were surprised by the fact it was occupied by more people than they were initially expecting to see.

Two pairs of matching azure eyes widened when they locked together.

“Mom?” Daiki mumbled. “What are you doing here?”

Surely enough, Mrs Aomine was paying a visit to the Momois. She looked up from her cup of tea in surprise when she saw her son venture into the room.

“I invited her to come over, since it’s been so long since we could last have a decent chat,” Mrs Momoi explained with a pleasant smile before turning to look at the tall young man as well. “Oh, Dai-chan! How pleasant to finally see you again!”

A moment of a quiet look passing between the two mothers and Mrs Aomine giving her son a deep, searching look while Satsuki was putting their coats away. Daiki returned his mother’s glance with reciprocating intensity and just barely discernibly shook his head.

No—he wasn’t here because she had remembered him.

And, he had to admit, he had to give the two elder ladies some serious credit for managing to mop up the heartbroken expressions from their faces before Satsuki could notice them wearing such.

“Something really weird happened to me today, mom,” the pink-haired young woman began while she sat down on the sofa next to her mother.

Daiki followed her lead and sat on a chair across the glass coffee table from her.

“When dad took the car today, I was left without a ride home. So I picked up the phone and I thought that I was calling  _you_ , but then, when someone picked up, it turned out that I had dialled Daiki-san’s number instead. It was really weird.” She shook her head at her own relapse, her long beautiful tresses of hair shaking in a fluid motion from the movement.

Her mother smiled kindly back at her.

“What a pleasant surprise, in that case!” Mrs Momoi enthused, leaning back into the cushions of the sofa as she turned to look at Daiki. “After all, it’s been a while since we’ve had you visit us, Dai-chan! You’re most welcome to stay as long as you want.”

Daiki smiled politely back at the woman who had always been like a second mother to him, and nodded his gratitude.

“I ended up asking him to drive me over. I invited him over for coffee, so I’ll go get that ready.”

While Satsuki and her mother fluttered over to the kitchen to prepare the promised beverage and some light snacks, Daiki felt his mother’s gaze burn into the side of his temple. So he turned and raised a brow as she scooted a bit closer to him in her chair.

When the intensity of her stare started getting unnerving, he couldn’t help but snap.

“ _What_?” he demanded and, even more infuriatingly, she simply clicked her tongue as she stared him down.

“Is that how she calls you? ‘Daiki- _san_ ’?” she inquired, incredulous and terribly saddened at the same time.

Daiki huffed and looked away.

“ _Please_. That’s a huge improvement from being  _Aomine-san_  for a whole week…” he muttered ill-temperedly under his nose.

And although he was the one most displeased with it, he really did believe that his mother’s dry sob was a bit of an overdramatizing of things.

“You poor child…” she mumbled and leaned in to embrace him.

And as she hugged him, hands shaking with emotion as her heart went out to him—something she rarely afforded herself to do over the years since he’d become a teenager—Daiki couldn’t help but feel like a little boy in her embrace. Even though he was twice her height and about three times her total size, and now she couldn’t envelop him as perfectly as she could when he was just a kid, he couldn’t help feeling vulnerable and exposed and stripped of all his brave pretences and bravado when she pulled him against her smaller frame like that.

So, wary of feeling so raw and exposed, he pushed her away from himself, shoving her back by her shoulder with a grimace of distaste.

“Knock it off, mother,” he hissed out, leaning away from her as much as he could without leaving his seat. “I’m not a little kid anymore…”

He kept muttering something under his breath the entire time until the two Momoi women returned with a freshly brewed pot of coffee and some snacks. But the entire time until their hosts re-joined them, Mrs Aomine was staring at the stern profile of her only son, and the crease in his brow while he grumbled to himself.

He could have all the rest of the world fooled with his tight smiles and fake laughs and pretending that he was somehow holding himself together.

But she was his mother and she could tell that he was just barely hanging in there anymore. She could see that he was falling apart, and, most horrifyingly, there was nothing she could do to help him out.

All she  _could_  do was watch over him—and Sacchan, too—and  _pray_.

Pray that somehow, against all the odds that were stacking against them, they would pull through.

* * *

 

When Daiki got back inside the car, the afternoon was far gone, the sun setting in gold on the horizon. He put his keys into the ignition, but his hands stayed glued to their spots, unmoving. He stared vacantly into the dashboard of his car, his breathing easy and his mind blank for a few evanescent moments.

He tried to squish the hope rising in his chest before it could lure him into  _that_  trap again. But when his mind spiralled out of control, conjuring impossible scenarios of how maybe,  _maybe_ , when she opened her eyes tomorrow she would remember and he wouldn’t have to feel like every minute with her was some kind of godsend in his day, and—

 _No_.

His hand turned the key in the ignition and he let out a slow, cleansing exhale through his nose when the engine roared to life.

He needed a drink. Stat.

* * *

He was starting to consider leaving his job and trying out his hand at being a sidekick or medium or some shit like that.

After all, he certainly had a  _gift_.

He had seen it from a week before it happened that nothing would actually change after that car drive home to the Momoi residence.

He was just so freaking  _good_  to have known all along—despite all his vain hopes that it would be the opposite—that she would let herself sink into oblivion again.

And that was just fucking  _perfect_ , you know? It’s not like he  _needed_  her or anything. He was perfectly fine sitting there with his buddy the barman and his best friend, Jack.

He was well on his way of downing his third glass when a familiar voice flitted to his ears. He shook his head and told himself that perhaps he should cut himself some slack on the alcohol—hallucinations were definitely a  _bad_  sign, even if they were only auditory.

“Hey, it really  _is_  Daiki!” Kazunari exclaimed when he clapped a hand to the former Ace’s shoulder. “What’cha doing in here, mate?”

He turned his head slowly, so as not to upset his already failing sanity, and gave Takao a quick once-over with the most listless expression he’d ever worn.

“ _Guess_ ,” he said sarcastically, a sardonic smile stretching his lips as he took another generous sip of his drink.

The former Shuutoku student shrugged his shoulders and climbed onto the stool next to Daiki’s on the bar’s counter.

“Who’re you here with?” he asked merrily, unfazed by the unusual hostility in his friend’s tone.

Aomine snorted into his glass.

“No one.” His smile stretched into a twisted grin. “It’s just me and my buddy Jack, whiling the night away.”

This got Takao’s attention. He raised a brow at his friend’s antics.

“You’re drinking alone?” he asked for confirmation.

“Well, you said you were busy today, and I sure as hell ain’t going back up in that apartment unless I’m smashed, so it’s not like I had that many options.” He chuckled mirthlessly at his statement, making Kazunari shake his head at that. “Where’s Midorima? I thought you guys were supposed to be together today.”

“He’s at the bookstore, picking up something he ordered,” Takao explained with a sigh, before shaking his head while observing his colleague’s behaviour. “Daiki, I think it’s about time you headed in for the night. I’ll escort you up to your place, make sure you’re in safe before I leave—what do you say?”

The navy-haired man snorted a laugh again.

“I think the one who needs and wants to leave is you. So don’t feel compelled to stay on my account—the door is over there,” he said with a noncommittal point in the general direction of the front door of the establishment.

His behaviour made Kazunari’s brows narrow as he watched Aomine finish his glass of liqueur and motion the bartender for a refill.

“How many of those have you had?” he asked suspiciously as he eyed Daiki lifting the new glass to his lips.

“Four. But who’s counting, right?” He smirked in a way that made his friend want to slug him across the face but he reined in the desire, opting instead for the diplomatic way out.

“You need to stop drinking and leave here,” he said in a solid, matter-of-fact tone that might have had Daiki convinced that’s exactly what he should do—if he wasn’t as drunk as he was.

“And what  _you_  need to do is stop meddling. Either join in on the drinking or leave—this is  _that_  kind of place,” he said icily, taking another large sip of his drink.

Kazunari felt his temper slipping.

“I’m just worried about you, you moron. You can’t drink yourself into a stupor every day just because life is rough right now—”

His words were cut short by Daiki bursting out into a giggling fit. He continued cackling until he started sounding creepy—and he did because there was no mirth in his voice, even while he couldn’t stop himself from laughing as much.

“Life is rough right now, you say?” he echoed, his grin becoming sadistic and eerie as he stared back into his friend’s face. “ _Stop kidding around_ ,” he snapped then, his fist slamming loudly against the thick wood of the bar’s counter.

The sound made several patrons around them jump in fright.

“None of you assholes even has a  _clue_  what life is like right now for me,” he ground out between his clenched teeth. His expression was so dark and sinister that Takao felt his pulse quicken in his veins as he stared back into sharp cerulean eyes. “You bastards can sugar-coat this with your pretty words all you want—it won’t change the reality of this.”

He downed his fourth serving in a single swig, making a grimace as he felt it sear his throat.

“I  _am_  alone in this. I go home to an empty fucking house. My phone never rings. Nothing ever happens, day after day, and nothing will  _keep_  happening. Until there’s not even a shred of me left to give a rat’s ass anymore.”

His chest was rising and falling fast as he lost his breathing. His jaw was clenched as he stared with glazed eyes at the glass in his hand.

“This is worse than fucking first year of high school…” he muttered while burying his face into his free hand. “Fuck my life, seriously…”

Kazunari watched him silently for a full minute, then two, before making a gesture to the bartender and ordering a drink for himself as well. When it arrived, Daiki gave him a puzzled look that Takao pointedly ignored while taking a brave sip from his glass.

He set it down against the counter with a grimace a second afterwards, but his face was set in determination.

“The fuck are you doing?” Daiki demanded incredulously as he stared at his friend as though he’d just told him he’d won a beauty pageant.

“I’m taking you up on that offer to go drinking together today.”

And as he powered his way—shakily and with lots of sputtering—through his first glass of whiskey, Daiki couldn’t help but smile crookedly at his friend’s antics.

He really found it endearing when his close people set out to prove him wrong.

Especially when they tried to prove him wrong about whether or not he was doing something on his own or not.

* * *

By the time Midorima finally strolled into the bar, looking for Takao, his lover was even drunker than Daiki.

Of course, that was owing to the fact Kazunari was a very lightweight drinker and the whiskey was way out of his league to begin with.

And despite knowing fully well all that he was on his second serving of it while heatedly discussing something with his co-worker, complete with lots of nonsensical hand-gesturing and slurred shouting.

Shintaro pushed his glasses up with two fingers, his face fixing into a firm scowl before he stalked over to the two morons.

“Kazunari,” he started in a bone-chilling tone, making the addressed man’s back stiffen. “What do you think you’re doing? I thought you were supposed to just wait for me till I finished my business with the bookstore. Why are you here, piss-drunk?”

His significant other turned slowly to give him the most puppy-dog eyed look he could manage in his current state of inebriation.

Needless to say, it wasn’t very effective.

“Well, Shin-chan, I walked in here and I happened to run into Daiki, who offered to get me a drink—I felt lonely without you around so I decided to take him up on that and— _ow_! Why did you hit me?! That  _hurt,_  damn it!” the raven-haired man complained loudly, pouting childishly at his lover while nursing his assaulted head.

“It was for being a moron and wasting my time with looking for you,” the emerald-eyed man said while eyeing him evilly. His gaze slowly slid to the occupant of the neighbouring seat, giving Aomine an evaluating look before returning his glare to its rightful recipient. “Now get up—both of you. It’s time to leave.”

“Aw, Shin-chan, loosen up! Have a drink with us!” Kazunari patted the stool on his other side with an idiotic grin. “Daiki and I still haven’t finished ours and there’s no way we’ll leave before we do—we already paid for this stuff.” The last part of his sentence he leaned in to whisper conspiratorially but his whisper was so loud Shintaro doubted there was anyone in the vicinity who hadn’t heard him.

A vein popped into visibility on the doctor’s forehead as his annoyance spiked.

“Cheers, Daiki!” the brunette toasted his colleague who clinked his glass with his. “To tsunderes – may they forever live and prosper!”

Aomine choked on his drink when he heard Kazunari’s toast. He ended up a wheezing, laughing mess while Shintaro seethed with rage and barely contained urges to vent his vexation in a physical manner again.

“But,  _man_ , this is seriously such a bummer, mate. I’m so sorry, really,” he said sincerely with a sad glance aimed at his friend, who quirked a curious brow over his glass. “I mean, if she was going to end up in such a state, what was even the point of surviving that crash, right?”

The fist that collided with Kazunari’s face swung so fast that it was hard to believe the one who’d thrown it was really on his fifth serving of hard alcohol.

The Shuutoku alumni duo barely had time to realize what had happened before Takao was a nursing his bleeding nose and lip, tears stinging in his eyes from the force of the impact. When Shintaro moved his gaze to look at Daiki standing in front of his fallen colleague, the medic found it impossible to stop himself from swallowing dryly at the murderous expression he found on his once-teammate’s face.

Aomine’s eyes were dull and cold, completely voided of any sensibleness as he glared venomously at Takao at his feet. His right hand was still balled into a fist at his side and he looked like he was very close to killing someone if provoked.

“Kazu, I swear to God—you say shit like that  _just one more time_  in front of me, and I will make sure to have you be the one in need for medical attention.”

His tone sent chills raking down Takao’s spine while he shakily picked himself up from the floor.

“Dude, I was just messing around—of course I’d never mean something like that  _seriously_ —” he started but the haunting glare Daiki sent him cut his explanation short.

“Don’t  _ever_  joke about something like that again— _you hear me_?” He grabbed a fistful of the shorter man’s shirt and gave him a shake so firm it made his head rattle. “Never,  _ever_  insinuate that there is any world in which Satsuki is better off dead. Got that?”

His hiss was so malignant that Takao was starting to feel outright scared. Alcohol was definitely making Daiki unusually vicious.

“No matter what happens to me, and no matter how it affects me, there is  _no version of this_  where Satsuki not surviving that crash is better— _understand_?”

“Let him go, Aomine,” Shintaro tried to interject but it seemed that his Teikou teammate was completely deaf and blind to anything but Takao’s horrified face.

The doctor turned his attention briefly to the bartender who looked like he was about to ask all three of them to leave. He raised his hand at the man beyond the counter, and shook his head at him.

“Dude,  _chill_. I’m  _sorry_ , okay? Bad timing, bad joke—I got it. It won’t happen again!” the raven head told his companion, hoping that would be enough to pry the other’s iron-gripping fingers from his shirt.

It wasn’t.

“Aomine!” Shintaro shouted over the din of the bar while throwing his coat on the stool Takao used to occupy. “Let’s have a competition.”

And poor simple-minded (also, pretty drunk) Daiki proceeded to prove Midorima right in assuming that he was a one-track-mind idiot even when he was totally wasted.

Unable to back down from a challenge the moment words like ‘match’, ‘competition’ and such were brought up.

The navy-haired man let go of his friend’s shirt and sat back quietly into his stool, never once tearing his gaze away from Midorima’s bespectacled glare.

“We’re drinking until one of us folds. And, to make up for Kazunari’s comment, drinks are on me. What do you say?”

Takao’s expression morphed into one of comic disbelief, his jaw dropping unbecomingly as he stared at his two closest people having a staring contest among each other.

Daiki’s face erupted into a predatory grin, showing rows of pearly white teeth to his challenger.

“You’re on,  _four eyes_.”

A muscle in Midorima’s right cheek twitched but he decided to save his annoyance for beating down that asshole into unconsciousness instead of wasting his breath on reasoning with him.

* * *

 

As they dragged the mostly fainted Daiki towards his apartment, Midorima had to admit that his plan to do this hadn’t really accounted for Kazunari’s height disadvantage when it came to carrying the big oaf to his house.

“Shin-chan, that was really neat—what you did there in the bar for Daiki,” he said with a goofy grin. “You’re a good friend. It’s such a shame he won’t remember it tomorrow.”

Shintaro sighed as he pulled Daiki’s arm more securely over his shoulder while he dragged the man’s motionless body across the street.

“It wasn’t  _‘neat_ ’, and his drinking himself into a stupor every night isn’t either…” he muttered darkly, a sigh tearing from his chest from both exhaustion and exasperation. “I need to have a talk with Momoi soon. This can’t continue.”

In many senses, Kazunari had to agree with his lover—this definitely couldn’t continue.

Especially the part with the two of them having to carry an unconscious Daiki three blocks to get him back to his apartment— _that_  definitely had to stop.

Bitch was fucking  _heavy_  when he was out cold, man!

* * *

 

Spurred by her recently inherent restlessness, Satsuki had taken up a mop and a sponge to do some house cleaning—in hopes of managing to scrub up her emotional state as well while she was at it, but not betting too much on it happening—while her parents were out.

She cleaned every nook and cranny of the house thoroughly in an efficient manner, leaving only dusting shelves to deal with.

And as she was finishing up, admiring her handiwork, her eyes fell on a big book-like object placed on top of the living room cupboard.

Curious, she took it down and opened it.

It turned out to be a picture album of her family—from the days when she was young until the most recent photos of her that they had.

And as she turned the pages, a fond smile on her face, she came to realize why all her friends and family had been so taken aback by her statement of her not remembering her supposed husband.

His dark skinned complexion and cornflower blue eyes were impossible to mistake. And every second picture from her childhood had him in it—face-splitting grin reaching from ear to ear as he stood next to her in all the pictures.

She continued turning the pages, marvelling at the photos as though seeing them for the first time—and in a sense, she was, because she could remember none of them being taken—watching as both she and the boy started aging in the pictures. Her body started filling out, her expression becoming softer and more feminine while his limbs became longer, his form wider and the angles of his face sharper.

There was a picture of their first day in their high school, standing side by side in their uniforms next to the front entrance. He was wearing an incredibly bored and somewhat miffed expression on his face, hands jammed in his pockets while she held onto his elbow, a wide smile on her face as she posed for whoever was taking the picture.

There was another of them dancing at their cultural festival, next to one of them stuffing their faces with festival booth foods and giving their thumbs up into the camera.

The last high school one was of their graduation, diplomas in hand and beaming grins on their faces.

It was surprising how, without knowing it for certain, Satsuki was sure that when this picture was taken, they were already dating. There was just… something in their expressions in that shot that spoke volumes to her about how they must’ve felt to one another.

Biting her lower lip guiltily, she kept browsing through the album, until she arrived at the very last two pictures in it. One was of her having fallen asleep over the very same sofa she was now sitting on, with Daiki putting a finger over his lips while one of her parents was probably taking the picture.

The last one was of their wedding—her in a magnificent, flowing white dress that accentuated and flattered all her curves, and him all prim and proper in his tux, his usually unruly hair smothered back into a stylish and neat hairdo as he held her hand on his arm.

Satsuki’s fingers brushed over the picture gently, caressing the protective folio it was placed in. She felt her heart clench in her chest at the sight of how happy those two people looked in that picture—they were practically glowing. And  _him_ —she had never seen him look so carefree and optimistic and…  _alive_.

All of a sudden her condition seemed a lot more real to her than it ever had before.

She was the worst human being in existence for having forgotten all about a man who could look so perfectly happy standing next to her, thinking it was his first of many pictures with her from countless they would continue taking over the years.

So she tried her best to summon some of those memories. She refused to accept that she, Momoi Satsuki, a person who was more than proud of her infallible information database, could have ended up  _forgetting something_ —something  _this important_.

She tried to remember how she’d worn that dress, how she’d put it on, how she had walked that aisle— _whom_  she had walked towards, with her father handing her to the taller man before moving to sit in his place next to her mother.

She tried to remember the faces of her maid of honour and the best man. She tried to recall who her bridesmaids had been, or what flowers there had been around them.

And the harder she tried, the louder the shrill incorporeal sound in her ears became. She ignored it and pushed through, trying to pull to the forefront of her mind which church they had gotten married in, what their wedding reception had been.

What his toast as the groom had been when they were surrounded by all their friends and family…

Satsuki shrieked in pain, clutching her hands to her temples. The photo album fell out of her lap and clattered with a dull thud to the floor. She doubled over in pain, a quiet moan dragging out of her mouth as she continued trying.

The pain didn’t stop, and the sound got louder the more she pushed. She kept trying until she felt like she had gone completely deaf and that her ears would start bleeding.

Before she could cause any further damage to herself, her mind shut down.

She fainted on the sofa, hands still at the sides of her head and teardrops glistening in the corners of her eyes in commemoration of her heroic attempt to revive the things that mattered to her.

* * *

 

When Daiki heard from Midorima that Satsuki had been rushed to the hospital after being found unconscious in her parents’ house, his heart skipped a beat and cold chills started racing up and down his spine.

Midorima had assured him that she was fine, and it was just a normal reaction to the overwhelming pain she’d experienced prior to her loss of consciousness, so there was nothing to be alarmed about for now. He didn’t even need to keep her overnight—her mom and dad took her back the same evening.

But no matter how he tried to downplay it, to Daiki there was nothing  _non-upsetting_  in this situation. He knew that reaction—he had seen it the first time she’d had a fit. So he was sure that she must’ve been trying to recall something about them before it happened—about  _him_.

She’d hurt herself. In an attempt to salvage her lost memories of their time together.

Maybe to someone else it wouldn’t be a big deal, but Satsuki had never been the easily fainting type. He could recall about two or three occasions at most in their entire lives when he’d seen her faint.

So  _this_ … really wasn’t something he could just nod and overlook.

When Takao suggested that they take up basketball again the next day at work—as a distraction, and as a means to get back something they used to love doing before they grew up—Daiki knew that it was time.

It was time to stop running away and start facing reality.

Because, sometimes—just like high school basketball back in the day—even good things had to come to an end.

* * *

 

Satsuki heaved a sigh, collapsing in a boneless heap on her bed. Well,  _that_  had been embarrassing.

Her attempt to make herself useful had ended up with her worrying all the people she wanted worrying the least—worrying them  _again_ , so soon after the last time she had, too.

She stared vacantly at her ceiling and shook her head at her own powerlessness. So much for doing the right thing…

And, no matter how much she tried to shake it, she couldn’t forget the seriousness of the look in Midorin’s eyes after he had finished thoroughly making sure she was fine.

 _“Satsuki_ ,” he had started with a deadly serious look on his face and in his emerald gaze. “ _We need to talk about Aomine._ ”

That’s how he’d started, before taking off his glasses the massage the bridge of his nose.

“ _W-what about him?_ ” she’d said evasively, looking anywhere but at her middle school classmate, worried that somehow he’d pick up on what she had been trying to do before she fainted and being embarrassed about it for some reason.

“ _Frankly, he’s barely holding up anymore._ ” His claim had made Satsuki’s eyes widen and shift to fixate back on him. “ _We’re all worried about him, because he’s on the verge of doing something excessively stupid should he snap. And the only one who can help him right now is you—nothing any of us say or do makes a difference to him anymore. Yours is the only voice that will reach him now, probably._ ”

Satsuki had swallowed dryly, her hands wringing together in her lap.

“ _What do you want me to do?_ ” she had muttered almost accusatively. Her tone had made Midorima shake his head at her.

“ _I don’t know. But you need to do something—and fast. Before he ends up being the one with the mental break down, institutionalized in here for treatment_.”

Rather than a warning, for some reason Midorin’s words sounded to her more like a threat. It made her skin crawl. What did he mean with ‘ _he’s on the verge of doing something excessively stupid_ ’?

There’s no way he’d do something that would make all their friends worry over him, right? He seemed fine the other day when he’d visited.

Although, if she had to be entirely frank, she knew that no matter how much she repeated it to herself, it wouldn’t make it any truer. She knew that he was  _not_ , indeed, fine. She had seen pictures of how he’d been before her accident—everyday pictures, of him doing normal things.

He looked nothing like he did nowadays.

His face, once enveloped in a calm and almost serene air, was now sallow and the worry wrinkles in his forehead gave away his perpetuated discomfort. His eyes, once vibrant with energy and mischief and indomitable will to live and experience  _life_ , were sullen and deadened.

It was all her fault. And she really, really wished she could undo the harm she’d caused, but her latest attempt to do so ended up with her being taken to the hospital— _again_.

So what was she to do?

“ _I don’t know. But you need to do something—and fast_ ,” Midorin’s words swam to the forefront of her mind’s eye again. She sighed deeply before going over to her old desk and taking a look inside of it in her urge to do something—anything—with herself.

She came across some of her old basketball data books from high school. She smiled fondly at the memory, sifting through the pages and her once neat handwriting.

Not even five minutes later, she was out the door and heading towards the house’s front door.

Behind her, left open on one of the pages—one of the many cluttered with information about a certain navy-haired young man—was her old high school data analysis book – her latest reminder of how much she must’ve cared for the man who was now her husband in name only.

* * *

 

She tried finding him at their apartment, but after the fifth time she rang the bell, she was forced to accept the fact that perhaps he was out somewhere.

Shoulders sagging in defeat, Satsuki headed down the stairs and out the building, her head bowed to face her feet as she did.

She was just in the middle of cursing her luck and pondering where in the world he could be at such an hour—and pondering if perhaps she should call him on the phone—when she almost bodily ran into the very person she was looking for.

Her eyes widened in surprise and she halted her step, staying glued to her spot in befuddlement as she watched him stagger out of a bar. His fingers fumbled only shortly while buttoning up his coat, a drunken grin on his face as he took off in direction of his home.

When he saw her, he stopped in his tracks as well, an overdramatized look of disbelief splitting his face.

“Hey,” she greeted nervously, suddenly realizing she had no idea what to say once finding him.

“Hey yourself,” Daiki greeted her, his smile slowly disappearing. “How’s your head? Heard you fainted yesterday.”

It took her a moment to place the name to the expression he was showing her in that moment. It was genuine worry, veiled as well as he possibly could in nonchalance—he was doing an impressive job at it, too, considering he was probably drunk.

Satsuki smiled at him and nodded.

“It’s good—nothing serious. Just had a little, harmless episode at home. That’s all,” she told him with a shrug and he quirked both his brows at her. His weight shifted to his other foot while he regarded her with all the seriousness he could muster at the moment.

“ _Harmless_ …” he echoed before chuckling mirthlessly. “Sure.”

“Have you been drinking?” she ended up blurting out before she could stop herself.

Her question made Daiki’s head turn to her again. He scrutinized her listlessly for a long moment. His lips stretched into a wolfish grin then, his head looming closer to her face before he answered her.

“I might have,” he said ambiguously _._ “I might not have. Want to have a taste to make sure?” he whispered against her mouth, breath fanning against her lips.

The action made a shiver run down her spine. He stayed there, staring into her eyes from just a few centimetres away from her. Her heart was thundering in her chest and her ears were ringing again in the minute stretching into eternity during which he kept staring into her eyes, challenging her.

He snorted a laugh and pulled away before she could react in any way to his taunt.

“You should’ve seen your face. Like a deer caught in the headlights of a truck.” He laughed but it rang forced. “Don’t worry, little doe—I have no interest in women whom the thought of kissing me terrifies them to the point they look at me like that.”

He patted her head, ruffling her hair before sidestepping her and going off in the direction she had come from.

“Tonight was my last night drinking. I’m going to be a good boy from here on, so you don’t need to worry about me,” he called out to her over a shoulder with a wave of his hand to her as he trudged down the street. “See ya, Satsuki.”

It took her a few minutes to realize that she’d never gotten around to telling him what she came here for. Then again, maybe it was for the better—she would’ve preferred to find him in a sober state of mind when she finally spoke to him about this.

It took her even more time than she was comfortable admitting to still the galloping of her heart and to rid her face of the flush that had risen in her cheeks at his proximity.

* * *

 

The next time she saw him was after work the next day.

She got word from Takkun that he’d be at the basketball court in the neighbourhood.

And when she went, surely enough, there he was, shooting hoops.

She stepped up onto the court still without any particular game plan in mind.

One thing she did know, though, was that they needed to talk about all the things they hadn’t in the past seven weeks.

It seemed he wasn’t yet aware of her presence, and she took the chance to collect her thoughts whilst watching him throwing the ball towards the hoop.

One thing she noticed is that he didn’t shoot like all the guys from high school and college that she remembered seeing. His form was all over the place, and yet strangely he scored every single time.

When the ball was about to get out of his reach after bouncing in a funny way after going through the hoop, he jumped after it and threw it from behind the goal. She’d thought that he was just making sure it would stay within his arm’s reach when he got back around the free-throw line, but then it actually went in.

Her eyes widened and she couldn’t keep herself from clapping a little.

“Whoa, nice shot!” she complimented him in an awed voice.

  
He turned to look at her over his shoulder. There were trails of sweat dripping the sides of his face, framing the outlines of his features. His dark skin was glistening in the orange-red hues of the setting sun.

He looked at her with wide sapphire eyes, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath again. Then his expression morphed into a small smile which made her heart clench in her chest.

“Thanks,” he said breathlessly, bending down to pick up the ball that had been left forgotten upon her arrival. He dribbled it, before taking a normal shot from the free-throw line. “I haven’t done this in what feels like forever, but it keeps going in.” He chuckled to himself, shaking his head while throwing a hook shot after grabbing the ball bouncing after his two-pointer. “Fancy that.”

The corners of Satsuki’s mouth curled demurely upwards as she watched him.

“How come you didn’t play in so long if you loved it this much?” she asked innocently.

Her query made him pause just as he was about to make a shot from the three-point line. He angled his head so he could throw her a meaningful look out of her corner of his eye.

“I got something more important I wanted to spend all my free time on, I guess,” he said cryptically before a sad shadow crossed him. “Oh well. Going back to the basics is nice every now and then, in a way.”

“Definitely better than spending all your money on booze in bars, right?” she chimed in jokingly and this time he laughed. He really,  _really_ laughed.

It occurred to her that this was the first time she’d heard him laugh so genuinely, so mirthfully. She loved the sound immediately, and wished she could hear it again.

“A lot better than that, yes.” When he took the ball, instead of throwing it back up to the hoop as though in an eternal loop like he had for the past few minutes she’d watched him, he held it in his hands and stared at it for the longest of times. “What are you doing here, Satsuki?”

She ignored the stab of guilt that speared through her and pretended to have missed the accusation hinted in his words.

“Is it bad for me to be here?” she asked as innocently as she could muster, but the dark look he sent her way made her drop the pretences. “I wanted to talk to you. About something important. If that’s all right with you.”

“If it’s about last night, don’t bother,” he told her with a cold chuckle. But more than his reaction, what piqued her curiosity was this.

“You remember it?” she piped up, her tone marvelling.

“Of course—I didn’t drink  _that_  much.”

She watched him for a few seconds, scoring from various possible positions around the goal, while she wondered what she should say.

“What do you mean, ‘don’t bother’?” she asked, her tone a bit strained.

She couldn’t say she particularly liked him misunderstanding her last night, but she didn’t really want to tell him how his closeness had affected her either—she didn’t want to give him any false hopes and half-truths.

“You know, it’s good that you dropped by. I have something I need to talk to you about as well,” he said after landing from a dunk.

She attempted to stop herself from pouting at having her question so blatantly ignored. It worked only about half well.

“Your mom called me after she found you fainted. She told me you were going through that family album she got a while back.” Satsuki blinked sagely at him, one of her fine brows rising in nonplus.

“What of it?”

“You passed out while trying to remember something, right?”

She clicked her tongue, and shifted her gaze away from him. He stopped shooting and stood in place, giving her a long, searching look from under the basket.

“Did it hurt?”

Her lips parted in surprise at the question. She turned to face him again, and she felt floored from the intensity of his sapphire orbs pinned to her in that moment. She swallowed thickly and moved her gaze to her feet.

“I don’t remember,” she muttered evenly.

He gave her a snort of a laugh, shaking his head in disbelief.

“ _Lies_ ,” he hissed out, turning to face the basket again. “You know, you may not remember me, but I have not forgotten a single thing about you. And I most certainly can still tell exactly when you’re lying to me.”

“What does it matter whether it hurt or not? The point is I still couldn’t remember anything, no matter how hard I tried. That’s what matters. And that’s what’s been vexing me for a while now,” she grumbled irritably to herself, kicking a pebble with her foot.

“It sure as hell matters to  _me_ ,” he muttered darkly, taking the few steps towards her.

And as he stood in front of her, she realized just how much taller than her he was. He was essentially towering over her when they were side by side. She stared up into his face, doing her best to ignore her quickened pulse at having him so nearby, his breath coming out in short, quick puffs while he stood in front of her.

“I don’t want you being in pain because of me…” he whispered, one of his hands rising from by his side to caress her face gently. She wondered if he could feel the heat in her cheek when he touched her.

Then again, his hand was so much warmer, he doubted he could even if he wanted to.

“And if it does this to you every time you try, then…” His fingers brushed against the side of her face, before he let his hand drop to his side again. “Then maybe you ought to just stop trying anymore.”

Something in his tone and in the expression on his face made her heart leap—and not in the pleasant way it had till just now.

“W-what do you mean?” she asked shakily, fingers twitching by her sides as she watched him turn around, giving her his back.

“If trying to remember me is hurting you this much, I’m going to ask you to stop trying to do it anymore.” He bent down to pick up the ball, dribbling it slowly next to his right leg. “I know that these things sometimes take time, and it’s barely been two months since the accident, but I think it’s about time we established something I’ve been trying to ignore for the past few weeks.”

Satsuki opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out. So, instead, she simply shook her head in confusion.

“If being with me is making you uncomfortable, and remembering being with me before is excruciating, then… I think it’s time to remove the troublesome element from the equation.”

Her ears were ringing again—like when she fainted, or when she was in the hospital right after the crash. Only this time, her head didn’t hurt. There was no physical manifestation of her turmoil, except the torturous clench of her heart in her chest, making it impossible to breathe normally.

“What are you saying?” she muttered numbly.

He caught the basketball in his hand, and rested it between his hip and forearm as he half-turned to look at her with the most heart-breaking smile she’d ever seen.

“You know, when we started dating, I wasn’t really sure this was going to work out. But you always smiled and told me everything would turn out for the best in the end. You promised you’d love me no matter what happened if I swore to do the same.” His cheerless smile wavered slightly when he lost his composure briefly. “That day I was absolutely sure that our relationship would be strong enough to withstand any trial, any obstacle that might come our way.”

He shifted his weight to his other foot, putting his hand on his face lamentingly.

“Never in a million years would I have thought there would come a day when you wouldn’t remember any of that, or that being around me would make you feel so out of place.”

He sighed and let his arm fall down against his side again, fixing her with his stern unreadable gaze.

“I know it’s only been two months, but they were the two most horrible months in my entire life. I get that it’s only been a short time, and complicated medical stuff sometimes takes longer to sort out, but I don’t think I can do this anymore, Satsuki.” Her tightened heart sank to the pit of her stomach, and she could barely hear him over the roar of her pulse in her ears. “I can’t keep getting my hopes up, only to have them shot down the next day, or the one after it. I can’t live like this anymore – waiting for something that might happen tomorrow, or next week – or maybe in ten years, or  _never_.”

She shook her head so barely discernibly that he didn’t even notice as he kept pushing through the lump in his throat to say what needed to be said.

“I really believed that we were meant to be together when you said you wouldn’t mind getting married. I believed that meeting you was destiny. I thought that what we had was strong enough to endure the trials of time and whatever else life could’ve thrown our way.” His hand that wasn’t holding the ball curled into a fist. “But I guess this is a trial we just weren’t meant to overcome.”

He looked up to her and her breath stilled in her lungs. The determination in his gaze scared her.

“I think it’s time to wake up and stop running away from the truth just because it’s hurtful and unpleasant to face up to.”

“Truth?” she murmured tentatively, her vocal chords stiff as she spoke.

“This relationship, whatever we had between us… it’s gone. Trying to bring it back only ends up with you being rushed to the hospital and—I can’t have that. And neither can you. So it’s time to move on.”

Her jaw dropped slightly ajar and she meant to say something but she forgot what. He turned to fully face her, bowing his head slightly to her before continuing.

“Thank you for loving me all these years. Thank you for always believing in me. Thank you for being there for me. Our time together meant the world to me. That’s why this is good-bye.”

That’s when she stopped listening.

She did because she couldn’t handle hearing another word of it.

She didn’t even know why, but for some reason what he said kept stabbing dagger after dagger into her heart.

It was strange. She should’ve felt liberated, free and careless after he had told her that he wasn’t going to chase after her with his impossible expectations of her. She should’ve felt content and at ease, knowing that there was no one on whose account to feel guilty over.

And yet, instead of feeling relieved, she felt much worse than she had in the past two months.

She still had no idea who exactly he was outside of the two months in which she had scarcely known him, but for some reason thinking that this was the last time she would speak to him tore her heart asunder.

She couldn’t handle thinking that he’d never again tease her for being embarrassed in his presence. She couldn’t accept thinking that she’d never again hear his ringing laughter again. She couldn’t take believing that today was the last time she’d hear his voice and exchange words with him.

She couldn’t accept a life without him in it.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” she barely managed to get out, bringing his attention to her face again.

His eyes widened as he took in the sight of her. His lips parted and he meant to say something, but she didn’t let him.

“Don’t I get to decide as well?”

“Satsuki, why are you crying?” He was at a loss, and so was she.

She had no idea why she was, but the tears were streaming down her face unchecked. She was crying inconsolably and she couldn’t even tell him why.

She didn’t know  _why_  and yet his saying good-bye to her like this was breaking her heart.

“I know this makes no sense because I’ve been so horrible to you ever after waking up in that hospital, but please don’t say these things. Don’t leave me alone.”

Daiki’s brows furrowed in confusion.

“I don’t get it—isn’t this what you wanted?”

Wasn’t it? Wasn’t that why she had run away from him to her parents’ house? It made no sense to him.

The truth was that ever since the accident, she always felt edgy, strained because she always had a feeling that something was amiss with her life. When she was with him, she felt awkward because he expected things of her she couldn’t face up to. When she was alone in her room at her parents’ house, she felt lonely and like she didn’t belong.

And that was  _weird_  because it was  _her room_ … and yet it was like this wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

There was a hole in her memory and a gaping one in her chest that she couldn’t reconcile. She’d made a valiant effort to do so in the past two months. The only times when things had been a tiny bit better was when he took her home a week ago, and when she met him on the street the other day.

She still had no idea what to make of her quickening pulse whenever he was close, or of how the temperature of her body rose whenever she felt his breath fan against her skin, but one thing she did know for sure: she couldn’t have him out of her life.

There was a voice in the back of mind, wailing, screaming and thrashing in horror, beckoning her to stop him before he went through with this.

“It’s not.”

“It’s  _not_?” he echoed, baffled.

“No, it’s not!” she insisted, taking the few strides towards him. She grabbed hold of his tank top when she stood in front of him, turning to peer up at him with her tear-streaked face. “Daiki, I’m sorry for hurting you like this these two months. I know I’ve been horrible to you, and it’s even worse that I don’t understand even half of how horrible it is because I still can’t remember anything but please,  _please_ , don’t go.”

She let her head loll against her collar as she hung onto him by her grasp on his clothes. He looked completely at a loss as to what to do as she cried so pitifully while clinging onto him.

“I know I’m being selfish here, and I won’t even ask you to forgive me for it because I know it’s not something you can just nod and accept but… I don’t know why but hearing you say good-bye to me—it made me so,  _so_  inexplicably sad and I… I can’t accept that.”

Her tears trickled down her face and splashed against the asphalt of the court. Daiki watched her helplessly before putting a hand awkwardly on her head in a form of consolation.

She sniffled loudly before unlatching her fingers from his clothes. She rubbed furiously at her cheeks, wiping the tears away. She took in a deep, steadying breath before looking up at him again—her eyes still watery but filled with determination.

Daiki tilted his head slightly as he waited for her to speak again.

“I know it’s heartless to ask this of you, considering how long our history goes and how much it meant to you… But can we maybe start again? From the beginning, with a clean slate?”

He quirked a brow at her and she swallowed thickly before taking another calming breath, willing her pulse to normalize as much as possible.

“Let’s put the past two months behind and start over from scratch.”

She extended her hand to him, a tiny but genuine smile stretching her lips.

“Hello. My name’s Momoi Satsuki. I recently survived a rather gruesome bus crash, so I’m trying to live each day to the fullest now. Pleased to meet you.”

The moment in which Daiki looked from her outstretched hand, to her face, and then back to her hand again—thinking, deliberating, weighing his options—felt like the longest moment in Satsuki’s entire life (or what she could remember of it, anyway).

He kept staring at her in silence, and her heart hammered nervously in her ribcage as she waited for his verdict.

She knew what she was asking of him was cruel. She  _knew_. But the whole reason it had been impossible to be next to him in the past two months was because the entire time she had been trying to remember what had been instead of focusing on what was important.

Namely, the fact that she had miraculously survived, and that she had another chance at life.

She was still alive and well, and as long as she was, there was still room for a happy ending to the story of their crossed paths.

When his much larger hand enveloped hers in a handshake, her heart leapt back to life.

Then she peered up into his face and her breath hitched as she looked into the kindest smile she had ever seen in her entire life.

“Aomine Daiki. Pleased to meet you, too.”

That’s when Satsuki knew for sure – some things—and people—were worth fighting for to keep in your life.


	5. Part 5 - Final

“You can think of it as, hmm,” she tapped her chin pensively with a fingertip, “role-play.”

 

Daiki threw her an incredulous look, complete with a curious quirk of his brow.

 

“Role play?” he reiterated as he walked over to the basketball hoop.

 

He had left at the base of it his towel and bottle of water.

 

“Yeah!” Satsuki enthused, shadowing his step closely. “For you, it can feel like we’re playing a ‘let’s get to know each other better’ game, because you already know all you need to. But for me, it will be a way to stop acting like you’re a stranger, and by spending more time together, I’ll be able to get over my awkwardness around you. What do you think?”

 

She told herself the reason she was looking so closely at him and barely even blinking was because she was eager to hear his answer to her proposal— _not_ because there was something inherently alluring in the way he dabbed the towel against his forehead and in the way his Adam’s apple bobbed while he guzzled down an impressive amount of water in a single breath.

 

His mouth unlatched from the bottle and he sighed deeply, having quenched his thirst. He gave her suggestion some consideration, before turning to peer into her face.

 

A smirk tugged onto the corner of his lip at whatever he saw in her expression.

 

“I suppose it does sound like it could be fun to try—pros most certainly outweigh the possible cons,” he acquiesced, picking up the ball from the ground before throwing the towel over his shoulder. He sized Satsuki up with a smug expression before adding, “It’s not the kind of role-play I’m used to, but I guess I can probably give it a try.”

 

Her smile and the quirk of her brows betrayed her puzzlement with the meaning behind his claim.

 

“What kind of role-play are you used to?” If voicing it hadn’t been enough to give her a hint, the sly expression on his face in response to it definitely would have been.

 

She blushed a deep shade of red as she followed after him, falling into his strides as they headed off the court.

 

“I don’t really think you know me well enough yet for me to divulge that kind of information,” he said with a wolfish grin, and she couldn’t resist the urge to elbow him in the ribs.

 

The moment she did, she pressed the fingertips to her lips, worried that she’d got way too familiar, but her lapse seemed to have amused Daiki further instead of putting him on edge—like she would’ve thought it should.

 

“Do you want to go grab a bite and chat over a drink or something? I could definitely use some food soon,” she asked him with a guilty smile on her face.

 

Daiki halted his walking, and for a moment, Satsuki’s chest clenched with worry that he may have changed his mind—that the reason he had been so friendly and smiley was because he had been drowning in relief at not having had to sever their bond completely, but now he had sobered up to the fact he didn’t want to play this pretend game with her, and—

 

“You want to go _now_?” he queried in a wary tone.

 

“What’s wrong with now?” she parried shakily.

 

His brows rose high over his clear azure eyes, and before her mind could go for another self-deprecating round, he shifted his gaze pointedly down at his form—clad in only loose shorts and a sleeveless tank top, both drenched from his earlier work out. His hair was all over the place, and his skin, all of it that was visible to the naked eye, was glistening with a thin sheen of sweat.

 

“I haven’t hit the cafés in a long time now, but I somehow doubt any of them will think _this_ ,” he motioned towards himself with a flourish of his hand, “as acceptable attire.”

 

Satsuki found she needed to nod her head in agreement with his pointing out an obvious fact she had overlooked simply because she had been too busy being transfixed with staring at said “attire”.

 

“Ah,” she murmured intelligently, cursing herself in her mind for her brilliant and long-winded response. “Point taken,” she added, just so she didn’t feel like bashing herself too much in her head.

 

She started walking off until she noticed that he hadn’t moved a bit from his spot. She stopped and turned to give him a searching look. That’s when she noticed he was staring pensively at her, sizing her up from head to toe.

 

She tried to ignore the shiver having his sharp gaze scrutinizing her so closely sent down her spine, and settled for something more familiar instead.

 

“What?” she snapped, putting a hand on her hip as she returned his stare.

 

“You seem properly dressed for an evening out downtown,” he observed, putting the hand that was free of holding the basketball on his chin. “My place is a few blocks over. If you don’t mind, we can go by the apartment for me to shower and change, and we can head out afterwards?”

 

Satsuki’s eyes widened a fraction in hopefulness as she realized that he didn’t want to turn her down.

 

She smiled brightly and nodded, following him in direction of his (their) apartment.

 

* * *

 

The feeling of sitting on your own couch, in your own home, while waiting for your supposed husband to finish showering after a straining workout so you can go out on what can essentially be considered a date was most certainly beyond Satsuki’s explanative ability. She could neither describe it properly in her own head, nor could she exactly wrap her mind around it.

 

But, she digressed. She chastised herself for once again letting her mind wander on tangents she was better off not exploring at the current time. She had promised to Daiki that she would do her best to start overcoming how unnatural it felt being around him lately, and these self-pressuring mental labels that she slapped on things were definitely a driving force of said awkwardness.

 

So, instead of thinking about it in such terms, she decided it would be much better to think of her current situation as waiting for her today’s date to finish with his shower so that they could take off to the café or restaurant of their choice for the evening.

 

Just as she established that notion in her mind, the water stopped running in the bathroom. And although it was not her intention at all, she ended up turning around just at the right time to catch a glimpse of his bare calves and water dripping down his frame, outlining the perfect tone of his abs when he walked out of the bathroom with just a simple towel wrapped around his hips.

 

She whipped her head back around, turning in direction that faced completely away from the way he had headed. She blinked profusely, good intentions of willing that mental image out of her head ending up fruitless.

 

“D-do you have anything to drink? My throat is parched!” she all but squeaked out, leading her to immediately chiding herself internally for it.

 

“No idea,” came the muffled puzzling retort from the bedroom. “Help yourself to the fridge.”

 

So she did.

 

There was a carton of milk on the fridge door, and she poured some in a glass. She raised the glass and took a sip a bit too confidently, and it all came to bite her in the ass when she ended up spitting it up into the sink the very next moment.

 

She hit her chest as she wheezed, trying to get herself together when Daiki came into view at the doorframe of the living room.

 

“You okay?”

 

“Why do you have _spoilt milk_ in your fridge?” she demanded incredulously, tears prickling at the corner of her eyes from her embarrassing episode with the beverage.

 

Daiki barely suppressed a chuckle when he looked into her face.

 

“You drank that?” he asked, and the urge to hurl something at his head became overwhelming.

 

That’s when she realized that he was still very much half-naked, with just a pair of jeans on. He was barefoot and topless, his chest still glistening with moisture and a towel draped over his neck to soak up the water dripping from his wet hair.

 

She turned her head away from his general direction so quickly it gave her whiplash.

 

“Sorry about that,” he told her in a tone that made her completely aware how _not_ sorry he actually was. “I haven’t even taken a look at the fridge since a week or something. I mostly eat out lately.”

 

He poured the milk into the sink and crumpled the carton before throwing it into the trashcan with a flick of his wrist. Satsuki moved aside to allow him room to move—because it was _polite_ , _not_ because she was worried her skin might burst in flame and her heart might break right out of her chest if his bare flesh brushed against her.

 

He ventured into the bathroom, leaving the door open, as he leaned down against the sink to brush his teeth. It was really crazy how often her gaze tried to go astray in his direction—and how many times she failed to stop it when it did. So she busied herself with looking around the apartment in her hurry to keep her mind from wandering to places it ought not to go.

 

And in looking anywhere else but at him, it was brought to her attention that even if the place didn’t seem too unkempt, it was also very obvious that the absence of this place’s second occupant was very tangible.

 

His clothes were thrown over the backs of chairs and piled in the laundry basket. There were so many unwashed dishes in the sink she would worry about allowing him to eat out of the same plates before thoroughly having those disinfected. The air in the room was rather stale—probably hadn’t had a window open in a while. And there was so much dust on the horizontal surfaces it would be hard to tell that there was someone living and using these spaces on regular basis.

 

The state of the apartment reminded Satsuki that even if they were doing this for her sake—this whole, so-called “game” (even though it felt like anything but a game to her), it was as much for his merit as it was for hers, too.

 

She wasn’t the only one who needed fixing.

 

She wasn’t the only one who had suffered because of this whole ordeal.

 

Because, while she may have taken the brunt of it at the forefronts, he had been the one to bear with the weight of the consequences from it.

 

Her lips set in a firm line as she heard the faucet of the sink turn to shut the water off. Daiki put away his brush just as Satsuki took the distance to stand next to him at the threshold of the bathroom.

 

He peered curiously at her while wiping his mouth on the towel around his neck. She had that same determined look on her face that usually spelled trouble for him.

 

“You still ruffled from that spoilt milk thing? Let it go,” he said with an exasperated roll of his eyes, sidestepping her to get out of the bathroom.

 

“Never mind that!” Satsuki said in a tone much too ceremonious not to be suspicious. “Put a shirt on already! Let’s go! There are restaurants and cafés just waiting for us to give them our money!” she exulted, ushering him towards the bedroom to fetch himself a top.

 

When he emerged from the premise again, he had his socks on, his hair was as dry as rubbing against it with the towel would get it, and he was buttoning up a tasteful navy shirt that flattered his colouring nicely.

 

“We’ve only been here for less than ten minutes, relax,” he drawled, smoothing out his collar. “And besides, what the hell are you talking about? You’re not paying for anything tonight.”

 

Satsuki threw him an incredulous glare over her shoulder.

 

“What? Why? I am a working woman! I am perfectly capable of paying for my own meals,” she insisted stubbornly.

 

He heaved a sigh of exasperation.

 

“None of that matters when you’re on a date with the one and only Aomine Daiki,” he said with a ridiculous pose. She snickered before she could contain herself.

 

“Speaking of which, do tell me more about this _Aomine Daiki_ ,” she said playfully with a small smile while he locked up the apartment.

 

“Like what, for example?” ‘Tell me something about whatever’ was just too broad a topic, in Daiki’s opinion.

 

“Hmm, for example, what blood type are you? Birthday date? Favourite colour? Favourite movie? Oh, oh, favourite basketball player! Because you are a fan of the sport, right? Oh, and if there’s anyone you looked up to when growing up. And also—”

 

“Whoa, whoa, _slow down_ ,” Daiki said with a defeated wave of his hands, and he made a show of looking troubled at how many questions she had fired off at him one after another. “Let’s see, err… Blood type – B. Uhh… Birthday? August 31st. What else was there…” he scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully as they descended the stairs.

 

“Favourite colour!” Satsuki chimed in vigorously.

 

“ _Huh_?” he said with an exaggerated drop of his jaw. “Who cares about stuff like colours anyway?…”

 

She smacked his arm as they continued descending the stairs.

 

* * *

 

Much later that same night, they stood at the threshold of her parents’ house, chatting the evening away for just a little longer before Satsuki could will herself to say good night.

 

“Whoa, it really did get quite late, though, didn’t it?” she mused when looking at her wristwatch. “It’s already 1 AM and I need to get up at 6—that’s going to be a load of fun.” She chuckled at her own future discomfort.

 

Daiki joined her with a snicker.

 

“Not as fun as the expression on that waiter’s face when he came to ask us to leave,” he said, chortling evilly.

 

“I think that by the end of it, he was almost ready to bribe us to leave, so that he could, too,” Satsuki agreed.

 

They lapsed into a companionable silence for a moment. During it, she looked up at him with a calculating gaze, weighing the words over in her mind before speaking them aloud.

 

“I’m going to dare to go out of character on our little role-play set up, so I can tell you this:” she took in a deep breath, willing her face not to change its colour, before continuing, “I had a lot of fun tonight.”

 

Daiki smiled down at her, putting his hands in his jeans’ pockets.

 

“I did, too.”

 

“I’m no expert—obviously—but as far as dates go, I think this one was actually a pretty big success,” she said, her hands clasping together behind her back.

 

“Glad to hear you think so,” the former Touou ace said with a smirk. He took his right hand out of his jeans pocket to rub the back of his neck in a nervous gesture while his gaze turned away from her. “The truth is that this is a first for me, too.”

 

Satsuki cocked a brow at that.

 

“ _Dating_?”

 

“Courtship,” he said quietly, making realization dawn on her. Before she realized she still didn’t really get it. “When we first got together, we went directly from friends to lovers because that’s the direction we’d both felt this bond was going. We’d known each other forever, so flirting was part of what we always did, but hitting on and getting hit on… it wasn’t in either of our repertoires. So this is new for me, too.”

 

Suppressing the grin from surfacing on her face was impossible. And she felt relieved that he smirked a little when he saw her grinning.

 

“What I’m saying is—Well, I guess, you’re not the only one out of your element here, so no worries.”

 

They shared a little laugh together, and in a moment, it seemed impossible for Satsuki to fathom that not even six hours ago he had tried to put an end to any and all unions like this between them.

 

On her account.

 

“That’s good to know,” Satsuki said, brushing a stray strand of her exquisite pink hair behind her ear. “Thank you for a lovely evening, Daiki. I almost wished it would never end.”

 

“Yeah, I think that’s the sentiment that waiter picked up on. It would explain why he was so eager to get us out of the restaurant before closing hours.” The former basketball player smirked again when her merry laughter rang in his ears as response to his jab. “Thank you, too, Satsuki. For being you.”

 

She relapsed into silence again, giving a thoughtful hum at length. Daiki’s expression urged her to speak what was on her mind.

 

She wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t out of line with this, but, hey, they had to start somewhere, right?

 

“I remember dad mentioning that he’s going to need the car tomorrow. So I was wondering, if it’s not too much trouble… could you maybe give me a lift tomorrow morning?” she asked with a hopeful grimace.

 

Daiki blinked, dumbfounded, for a moment before he gathered his wits again well enough to respond.

 

“Yeah,” he muttered hoarsely. “Yeah, sure,” he repeated, his voice stronger this time. “I’ll see you right here in, uh—” he paused, checking his watch, “damn, less than six hours.”

 

She smiled lopsidedly before thanking him again and turning to put her hand on the doorknob.

 

However, she halted halfway through turning it to open the door. Instead, she turned around and fixed him with the most puzzling expression he’d seen on her face all night.

 

If he had to put a label on it, he’d say she looked constipated.

 

Before his mind could venture any further off-track, though, she took the step that separated him from her, standing up on her tiptoes and holding onto the front of his shirt for leverage.

 

The press of her lips against his cheek was short-lived and somewhat juvenile—compared to the things they’d done together _before_ —and yet it was somehow enough to make a red tint dust the sides of his face.

 

When she eased back on the heels of her feet, her cheeks were a lovely rose colour and the prettiest of smiles was adorning her face.

 

“Good night!” she all but squealed out before rushing inside the house.

 

He chuckled lightly in wake of her departure, running a hand through his hair. Then he eased it to the cheek her lips had touched, and a sigh tore from his lungs.

 

“Good night,” he muttered to night, because she was already out of earshot.

 

And for the first time in two months, Daiki felt hopeful without dreading the morning after.

 

* * *

 

Satsuki closed the door behind herself, turning the key in the lock until it clicked. She leaned her back against the wood, taking a moment to still her nervousness.

 

She’d worry that she’d taken this a bit too far if she wasn’t just so overwhelmed with joy from the whole evening she had just spent, worry-free and so pleasantly engaged in fun chatter and playful banter that all thoughts of road accidents and almost-ruined bonds had flown right out of her mind. It had been so natural, felt so _right_ , to be out with him, just being around him and soaking up the feeling of being in his presence. It made her wonder why she had been avoiding him so vehemently before, instead of allowing herself to experience it fully.

 

She pushed away from the door after taking a steadying breath, heading quietly up the stairs to her room.

 

As she closed the door behind, she completely failed to notice the secretive smile playing upon her mother’s face from across the hall.

 

The elder woman had been up to go get some water when she heard muffled talking right under her window. Upon a quick inspection she had discovered it to be her beloved daughter with none other than her son-in-law.

 

The sight of them had instilled Mrs Momoi with a sense that things could perchance really end up being fine, if it was these two kids…

 

* * *

 

His daily trips to her parents’ house and her work place became bi-daily quickly. In fact, the very first moment she suggested they could go back to that initial plan from before she moved back to her old house, he—maybe a bit too vigorously not to be slightly alarming—accepted the idea.

 

And she’d be damned if those two sets of half hour rides weren’t the highlight of her day every day since then.

 

Their outgoings became a frequent thing as well, with the two of them going downtown for some food, or drinks, or a walk around the park, if the weather was nice and she didn’t feel like heading home yet.

 

The more time Satsuki spent around him, the better she came to realize what it had been that had unsettled her so strongly at the beginning.

 

Well, aside from the inherent faultiness of her memory that left her feeling unwholesome.

 

He was perfect.

 

And, while she knew that the statement itself was false, she stood firmly behind it.

 

She was well aware that he was just a guy, so of course there was no way he was completely faultless. She was also well aware that he was just recovering from the damage she’d caused him—cornering him so far that he’d felt that severing their bond would be better than attempting to wait out salvaging it—and that he was still trying to impress her, in a way – showing her only the agreeable parts of himself. He was trying to keep her pleased at all times, because he wanted her to enjoy his company and appreciate it.

 

But that was just it. _That’s_ where he was perfect. And that’s exactly what had made her so uneasy at first.

 

He knew exactly what to do and what not to in order to have her completely pleased and placated. He knew what she liked, and he knew how she liked it. He could read her like an open book to tell exactly when and what she wanted. And he did it with staggering accuracy and efficiency.

 

He catered to the whims she didn’t even know she had when they were out together. He had no trouble talking normally with her no matter how strained or nervous she got, how fidgety and uncertain.

 

He was like a perfect fit to the puzzle of her life, his presence somehow making many other things right as well.

 

It was funny, really. She didn’t know him that well yet—not really. He was still something of a stranger, but he was the stranger who knew her better than she knew herself.

 

It was like she had gone down to the street and taken a random person’s hand, only to find out a second later from their every word, every gesture, every breath that she had randomly taken hold of her soul mate.

 

And that was _weird_ , because that’s not how life worked. It was an anomaly, because the reason he was so perfect was because he knew her, but she didn’t know him.

 

That simple fact created such a strong discord inside of her at first that it had taken her aback, scared her off.

 

And her own discomfort had diverted her attention from what really mattered in that situation.

 

Namely, the fact she didn’t know him was correctible. Easily done, too.

 

It had only taken her almost losing him completely to realize such a simple truth.

 

It had taken her a night to realize that it was okay to feel doted on and accepted by someone whom she couldn’t remember.

 

It had taken her two days to realize that even if she didn’t try too hard to recall all the memories that had culminated in his current disposition to her, those memories would come back eventually—so she was better advised spending some more time in the present instead.

 

Of course, it was still weird that even if he didn’t ask her what snacks she wanted when they sat down in the park, he came bearing exactly the same item she’d been craving since setting foot in the recreational area. It was odd that his tastes in music to listen to in his car largely coincided with hers. It was a bit unnerving how well he could read how she would react to things that happened around them and to them while they were out downtown together.

 

But instead of being alarmed by that—a certain amount of distrust inspired from her memory loss urging her towards the darker interpretation of those occurrences—she chose to be charmed.

 

Instead of feeling the urge to run away from the inexplicable desire of getting closer to him, she let it have free reign.

 

* * *

 

“Takao! Takao!” one of Kazunari’s co-workers came to him, grabbing at the front of his suit in dramatically exaggerated despair. “Get a load of this and _weep_.”

 

“You assholes are seriously taking this crap way too far,” Daiki interjected testily, slapping the back of the head of the guy holding onto the former Shuutoku player.

 

Kazunari’s ears perked up at the notion of getting some dirt on Daiki. It was _always_ good to have some spare leverage over friends—especially when you’re as prone to mischief as Takao was.

 

“Aomine has been all grins and sunshine and rainbows lately because he’s been _dating_ ,” their co-worked wailed out, burying his face in Kazunari’s shirt.

 

“ _What_?” the raven-haired haired man roared, his face twisting in outrage. It was the only sensible response he could manage, considering the plethora of other questions he wanted to blurt out and immediately require an acceptable answers for. “He’s doing _what_?”

 

“No, no, see, the point _is_ , that Aomine isn’t just dating—he’s _dating_ his _wife_!” the other man said through a not very masculine sob, collapsing down to his knees. “I’ve been trying to get him to come with me to pick up chicks for _years_ and he’s shot me down every time, and now that he finally gets a chance to go out, have some fun, _what does he do_? He _dates_ his _wife._ I mean, _who even does that,_ right?!”

 

A knowing look stole over Kazunari’s face then, before his features moulded into his trademark wolfish grin.

 

“How sly, Daiki,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Is that why you ditched me three evenings in a row on the basketball dates? To go on _actual_ dates with your missus?”

 

“Sorry ‘bout that, Kazu,” the navy-haired man said, smirking a little at being elbowed by his shorter friend in a conspiratorial manner. “We up for tonight, though?”

 

“Only if you have time for me in your busy schedule—I know you’re a guy with firm priorities,” Kazunari said teasingly, before walking over towards his desk.

 

“Yeah, yeah, give it a rest already, it’s not that big a deal,” Daiki grumbled but his feigned grouchiness failed to veil the childlike glee that bubbled in his tone.

 

“ _Why did the conversation progress like that without me?!_ ” their co-worker lamented loudly from the ground. “What this man is doing is an _abomination_!” he insisted melodramatically, making all his colleagues within earshot roll their eyes.

 

“And what you’re doing is wasting this company’s money, slacking during working hours. So get back behind that desk, or I will get you there myself, smart ass,” their boss said when he came down the stairs, making the previously wallowing man jump back to full attention.

 

He smoothed out his suit and saluted his superior, chanting a quick “sir, yes, sir!” before marching right back into his office.

 

It took all the self-control they had for Daiki and Kazunari to keep their laughter to just silent sniggers before resuming their own tasks.

 

* * *

 

It didn’t take Satsuki long to notice that no matter how much fun they had going out, watching movies together or just spending time in one another’s company, and despite the fact that his personality type screamed that he was the aggressive type when it came to these things, Daiki refused to do anything more straight-forward than standing right next to her, his arm brushing against hers discreetly every now and then—but never taking hold of her hand directly.

 

She racked her brain over why that was—boggled how it was even possible—before she realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that it was her fault entirely.

 

The way she’d reacted as though scalded when he’d moved in to kiss her that day when she was living with him after coming out of the hospital—it had left a lasting scar in his confidence when it came to seeking closeness with her now.

 

She also noticed it in the way it was always as though he were tiptoeing around her, handling her as though she were glass.

 

And although it was kind of flattering to have someone so aware of you, she was definitely not so fragile that she would break upon a simple touch.

 

And she most definitely didn’t need to be put behind a glass and doted upon so carefully.

 

It seemed he needed to be reminded of that.

 

Satsuki had never been the type of girl not to rise to the challenge when it was offered before her.

 

* * *

 

“Haha, oh my _gosh_ , look at this picture Ki-chan just sent me,” she said through laughter, trying to compose herself enough to be able to string a proper sentence. “Apparently, his fame as a model carried all the way to Russia, and this is the kind of state he found his hotel room in after he landed.”

 

Daiki leaned over her shoulder next to her on the bench, taking a look at the phone in her hold. She held it up for him to see and as he doubled over laughing as well, she couldn’t help a grin of her own.

 

“Damn,” the navy-haired man commented while wiping a tear from the corner of his eye at having laughed too hard. “Poor Ryouta. He must be cursing his fame as a model before joining that airline now.”

 

“I think he’d be more worried about someone else cursing him, or casting some kind of magic over him right now rather than doing any cursing himself,” she giggled while pocketing her phone again.

 

That’s when she noticed Daiki staring at her profile.

 

“What? Do I have chocolate on my face, or something?” she queried warily, brushing at her mouth tentatively. In light of how messy she could get while eating taiyaki (which they had earlier), she wouldn’t be too surprised if that were the case.

 

“No, I was just—I’ve never seen that necklace before,” he pointed out, motioning towards the chain on her neck. “I just noticed it. Struck me as peculiar.”

 

“Oh, this,” Satsuki began shyly, fingering the chain gingerly.

 

Daiki raised an intrigued brow at her reaction.

 

“It’s just something that I didn’t feel entitled to wear yet, but I thought I ought to keep close to me at all times. So I put it on a chain instead.” The confused look on his face was so extreme it was almost hilarious. “Try to guess what it is?”

 

He snorted, shaking his head in dismissal.

 

“As if there’s any chance I can just guess that,” he claimed, completely convinced.

 

Satsuki didn’t allow herself to get shaken over his briskness.

 

“Really? Even though it’s something that you have given me?”

 

Before Daiki could even open his mouth to voice his utter befuddlement with her cryptic talk, his gaze wandered over to her once again, only to fall to her neckline, where the chain around her neck was now being held to dangle within his view.

 

And there, hanging upon it, was her wedding ring.

 

His eyes widened.

 

“How long…?” he mumbled, never managing to finish his sentence.

 

He didn’t need to finish it for her to understand.

 

“Ever since coming out of the hospital,” she told him, sounding somewhat proud. “I knew this was important so I wanted to always keep it with me. But all the things that happened were too much for me, and I didn’t feel like it was right to wear it on my finger. So I put it on a chain,” she finished with a small smile.

 

She took the chain off her neck and slid the ring out of its clasp. She put it on her finger and regarded it for a long moment with an enigmatic curl of her lips.

 

“There – still a perfect fit,” she observed smartly. She exhaled a deep breath through her nose, blinking down at the band on her finger. “Just waiting for me to become a better fit for it again…”

 

When she looked up, Satsuki was floored by the intensity of Daiki’s gaze as it locked with hers. She was suddenly very aware of the fact he was less than a foot away, and that she could perfectly well feel the heat emanating from his body from the way they were pressed up against each other sitting on the bench.

 

For a moment, she felt like he was leaning in because his eyes sparked with emotions barely kept at bay – tempestuous, overwhelming. Her lips parted and she sucked on a breath as she leant in as well.

 

And then he shifted his gaze away from her mouth. She could practically feel him turn tail right there—but she was having none of that. Not today. Not on this one.

 

She put her hand on the back of his neck and forced him to direct his attention back to her frowning face. He appeared taken aback by the directness of her actions. Her brows narrowed in return.

 

“Don’t chicken out now, Daiki,” she ground out in the lowest tone she could manage, the challenge clear in her sharp eyes.

 

“Who’s chickening out, you vulgar woman?” he snarled back and leaned in the rest of the way. He captured her lips in the kiss he’d been yearning to give her ever after seeing her awake and _alive_ and well in that hospital bed those two months ago.

 

Spurred on by the heat of the moment—and her impeccable taunt—his lips moved against hers arduously, pliantly, imploringly. Once she responded to him, he wasted no time in letting himself into her mouth, tongue swiping at her slightly parted lips and dipping in before she could react at all.

 

When his nimble tongue started exploring her mouth, engaging hers in a searing dance for dominance, Satsuki’s breath hitched in her throat. Her heart was hammering against the confines of her ribcage. She found his fervour astounding. It was also more than a bit flattering to feel so strongly desired, so much emotion conveyed through just a single kiss.

 

One of her hands held onto him by the crook of his neck while the other fisted itself in the spikes of his hair.

 

When they parted eventually—gasping for air—she felt winded and a little dizzy but it was the most exhilarating emotion – she felt as though she was floating.

 

He moved in for another quick peck on her lips before resting his forehead against hers with a deep sigh. His hands were cupping her face, his touch feather-light. He closed his eyes and breathed her in.

 

“ _Wow_ ,” Satsuki mumbled breathlessly. He chuckled against her. His warm exhale fanning against her lips made her skin erupt in goose flesh.

 

“Damn, I missed this,” he confessed earnestly, another heavy sigh tearing from his lungs again. “It feels like forever since I could do it last.”

 

“Then,” she started, once she had calmed a little the rapid rise and fall of her chest. “We have a lot of catching up to do, right?”

 

And looking into his eyes from this close—the playful glint shining in her own—made her realize just how mesmerizingly beautiful the deep cerulean hue of his irises was. Staring into them made her feel like she was being engulfed in a bottomless sea of adoration and passion.

 

He was a surprisingly observant listener, because he picked up on her hint fast enough. He leaned in and captured her lips again.

 

As she revelled in the feelings that his searing kisses left her with, she didn’t even have half a mind to care that they were still outside, and that public displays of affection like this were unacceptable. She didn’t care if anyone came by and saw them because she was too engrossed in the magic he was working over her, setting every nerve in her body alight with need.

 

She only realized her mind had completely shut down for a long moment when it kick started back up. She was starting to get swept up in her passions as well, but when his kisses started travelling down the column of her throat, along the line of her collarbone and his nimble fingers started taking free reign over her upper body, she felt alarmed.

 

It wasn’t that it felt wrong or that she wasn’t okay with this happening—in fact, what was more disconcerting was how much she actually _wanted_ this to continue—but it was just too fast.

 

She didn’t want it to go out of control.

 

She was just starting to get a good hang of their situation recently, so letting things go crazy now was completely unacceptable.

 

So, as gently as she could, she put a finger to his lips and pushed against them gently, making him pause and pull his head away from her to give her a quizzical look.

 

She had to smile at how delicious he looked, his breathing all over the place and his cheeks aflame with want.

 

“Slow down,” she asked him gently with the kindest smile she could manage. “One step at a time, okay?”

 

A shadow flitted across his face. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights. She knew that he was probably freaking out—the expression on his face told her as much—so before he could dig himself into an overthinking hole, she cradled his face gently and leaned in to place a soft, innocent kiss against his closed lips. It was the only form of reassurance she could think of at the moment, given his proximity and her roaring pulse. She wanted to assure him that he hadn’t done anything wrong by her, and all she wanted was a bit more time to acclimate.

 

The tenderness of the gesture wasn’t lost on him, and she could tell that it was enough to keep him from panicking at the time being.

 

“Sorry,” he muttered tersely, letting his head drop on her shoulder with a sigh. “I got carried away. I just… I’ve missed you so much, Satsuki.”

 

She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him closer to her body. A smile stretched her lips.

 

“I know,” she whispered into the night, the gentle breeze blowing around them carrying her words away. “We’ll get there,” she promised sincerely. “Just… give me some time to get used to this.”

 

He nodded against her neck.

 

Then his arms snaked around her form and he enveloped her in his embrace as well.

 

She allowed herself to sink into the hug, wondering why somehow, when they were so close like this, she could almost believe that the world was the safest and most wonderful place to be.

 

* * *

 

The next day found Satsuki opening her eyes to a vaguely familiar ceiling. She exhaled slowly and attempted to lift her head off her pillow—only to realize several things at once.

 

First, the reason the ceiling was vaguely familiar was because it was the ceiling of Daiki’s living room—which had been her living room for a week as well. Second, she realized that her whole body felt so sore it was difficult to move at all.

 

And, last but certainly not least importantly, her ‘pillow’ had a heartbeat—steady and calming.

 

Her eyes widened as she realized that she had fallen asleep against Daiki’s chest last night.

 

After their outing at the park last night, she had insisted that they go watch that movie he had told her so much about. So they ended up at his place, watching the movie and occasionally throwing popcorn at one another when either of them said something that started funny little squabbles between them.

 

She’d had so much fun being an idiot alongside him that even when she felt her eyes drooping, she refused to say that she was sleepy. Pig-headedly determined to finish the film before she told him she wanted to go to bed, she must’ve ended up nodding off on his shoulder somewhere along the way.

 

As she lifted herself slowly from the uncomfortable position on the couch, easing the burden of her body off of him, she could tell that he must’ve dozed off at some point as well.

 

And somehow, even though her neck hurt like a bitch and blood circulation to her feet would need a few seconds to get properly flowing again, Satsuki regretted nothing.

 

* * *

 

Ending up sleeping over without having planned to at a place you used to live in was quite convenient, Satsuki discovered.

 

When Daiki stirred a few minutes after her, she greeted him good morning with a crooked smile. He grumbled something back while testily cracking his neck and griping about something to himself.

 

He got off the couch after exerting impressive effort, and she barely stifled the giggle as he dragged himself across the room to grab onto the coffee maker and turn it on.

 

“What time is it?” he asked, his voice hoarse with disuse.

 

“Just past ten,” she responded, peering curiously at his profile. When he noticed her, he sent her the most deadpan look she’d seen in a while. “You’re not really a morning person, are you?” she observed astutely, her grin widening.

 

“ _No_ ,” he ground out at length, dragging a hand over his face in an attempt to help rid himself of the remnants of his sleep. “I’m not.”

 

“That’s kind of cute,” she told him merrily just as he was pouring himself a cup of coffee.

 

He almost choked on his sip at her claim.

 

“How the fuck can that _ever_ be ‘cute’?” he grouched, shaking his head in disbelief at the insane shit she sometimes came up with. “Seriously, woman, you’re a crackpot sometimes…”

 

Satsuki giggled as she continued watching him sip his coffee after he sat down on a chair at the dining table. It was definitely quite refreshing to get to see him in this kind of light as well. It made him look a lot more humane to her to finally see what he was like when he wasn’t catering to her every whim.

 

Also, that ridiculously childish pout on his face was somehow oddly adorable. It looked completely misplaced on his face, which was probably what made it so endearing.

 

He threw her another pointed glare, letting her know exactly how he felt about her grinning and giggling so early in the morning. She lifted her hands palm-up towards him in a placating manner, backing off a bit.

 

“Do you mind if I go take a shower?”

 

“Help yourself,” he answered gruffly, taking another sip of his coffee.

 

“I’ll give you some time to properly wake up,” she said with a snicker and skipped off towards the bedroom when he threw her another evil eye.

 

That’s when the fact she used to live here, for a long time before this whole escapade happened, hit her. She had several different towels, and so many clothes in the drawers that she didn’t need to worry what she’d change into after coming out from the bathroom.

 

It was rather odd, really, but not in an unpleasant way.

 

Fifteen minutes later, she emerged from the shower, feeling refreshed and much better than she had right after waking up. She wrapped the towel around her body and ventured into the kitchen. She waltzed over to the coffee pot and poured some of the dark liquid into a mug for herself. She took it gingerly and took a tentative sip of it, nodding to herself before moving to sit next to Daiki on the couch before she realized that he was staring at her very closely.

 

His face was painted into the most comic look of complete disbelief and exasperation. She fought to keep herself from bursting out laughing.

 

“What?” she demanded innocently.

 

His eye twitched in an annoyed tic in response to her obliviousness.

 

“Are you testing me right now or something?” he seethed, making her bat her eyes perplexedly at him.

 

“Am I what now?”

 

“Are you testing my self-control here, or are you _actually_ that idiotic?” Daiki demanded, the twitch of the muscle under his eye striking again.

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m fairly sure the name-calling is uncalled for,” Satsuki argued in a miffed tone, crossing her arms under her ample bosom.

 

Which brought Daiki’s attention exactly to what he was trying _not_ to look at.

 

“Satsuki,” he started in a peevish tone, massaging the bridge of his nose with his right hand. “I know I promised yesterday I would behave. And it’s not like I am some kind of savage beast here incapable of any self-control whatsoever. But, coming right out of the bathroom, still dripping wet and smelling all sweet like flowers and fucking sunshine, you sit next to me with only a towel covering you and you honestly think that is _okay_?”

 

She was torn between laughing at the strained and aggravated grimace he was making, and feeling embarrassed at not having given this thorough consideration before doing exactly as he had described.

 

“You do realize that I _am_ male, and that I _could_ jump you despite putting in my best effort not to?” He sighed, tired out of this whole exchange already. He shook his head to himself and picked himself up from the couch.

 

“Sorry,” Satsuki called out after him in her best attempt to sound apologetic. “It just felt so natural I ended up getting carried away.”

 

He pinched the bridge of his nose again, and she felt like a small child getting chided for being mischievous. And that thought alone made her giggle to herself again.

 

“I’m going to shower, too, and when I come out, you better have some clothes on. Got it?” he barked out before slamming the door to the bathroom shut.

 

Satsuki grinned to herself as she sunk further into the couch, sipping at her coffee.

 

“Got it,” she said to no one in particular, taking a moment to enjoy the late Saturday comedy shows on air before going to pick something to wear.

 

* * *

 

When Daiki came out of the bathroom, he was met with a fully clothed Satsuki munching on some crackers while watching TV in the living room.

 

“Feel any better?” she asked in a knowing tone, making him snort and roll his eyes. Still, he couldn’t fool her, because she could see the smirk tugging on the corner of his lips.

 

“I guess,” he relented.

 

He proceeded to do the exact same thing she had done earlier, minus the coffee mug. Satsuki raised a brow at him—and the towel covering him that was riding up his thigh from the way he was sitting—as he reached over to snag some crackers from her.

 

“What are you watching?” he asked, his gaze pinned to the screen. He completely ignored the incredulous stare she was fixing him with.

 

“ _Seriously?_ ” she parried with a question of her own, laughter bubbling in her tone.

 

“Yeah—I’ve never seen this,” Daiki said, and at that point she was starting to wonder if he perhaps wasn’t feigning cluelessness.

 

“No, I mean _this_ ,” she motioned towards him with a sweep of her hand, “ _seriously_? I don’t get to do it, but when it’s you, that’s totally fine?”

 

At that, his face morphed into the sliest smirk.

 

“Of course—for me, you jumping me is a sought out effect,” he told her with a chuckle.

 

She shook her head in disbelief at his antics and reached out to smack his bare arm playfully. They lapsed into a comfortable silence, broken only by the sounds from the TV. He ruffled his wet hair, trying to dry it out as best as he could manage and feeling a bit too lazy to get up and get dressed.

 

“Daiki.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

When she didn’t continue, he angled his head to the side a bit so he could throw her a searching look.

 

The pink-haired woman was biting her lip, her hands fidgeting in her lap. Daiki raised a brow at her behaviour.

 

“Would it—” she began but dropped the sentence halfway. “Would you mind if—” she tried again, but thought better of it once more.

 

What was she trying to say, anyway? And what was with all the ceremoniousness about it? He honestly didn’t get it.

 

“Is it okay if I move back in?” she mumbled out in the tiniest voice she had ever used.

 

After she finally asked her question, Daiki understood exactly what all the fidgeting and the difficulty phrasing had been about.

 

When he didn’t answer her, she moved her head to fix her gaze on him in order to gauge a reaction out of him. But the moment her face was turned to him, he leaned in towards her to give her his answer in a more expressive way than the verbal.

 

The kiss he pressed to her lips then was unlike any of the other ones before it.

 

* * *

 

She had moved back into the apartment she shared with Daiki the very same day after asking him his thoughts on the matter. And although he hadn’t been very thrilled at sharing a bed with her for a couple of days without being allowed to try any funny business in it, he had relented to her terms fairly quickly.

 

After all, she couldn’t just exile him on the couch like she had after her return from the hospital. Sleeping on it didn’t treat him too kindly from what she had seen.

 

Still, even if she was comfortable around him now, and even though she felt obscenely attracted to him, somehow jumping him after just going out a few times sounded a bit too skanky to her.

 

However, that man certainly knew how to press her buttons—she had to give that much to him.

 

It was like he had sniffed out the wavering of her conviction, because when he started pressing sensual open-mouthed kisses against her neck and bare shoulder one evening, denying there being any crafty ploy behind his actions, Satsuki couldn’t help but feel that his timing was a bit _too_ precise.

 

All of that stopped mattering, though, when his lips latched onto hers and she allowed herself to be drowned in the ardour of his kisses.

 

When his fingers started following the flawless curves of her body, mapping out her form, she didn’t protest this time. Her skin burnt in wake of his touch, yearning to feel it anew.

 

Before she knew it, she was on her back and he was over her, his hands kneading the soft flesh of her breasts while his mouth was fixed upon one of her pert nipples.

 

The sounds his ministrations were drawing from her throat sounded like someone else’s voice in her ears. She had never heard herself sound this erotic.

 

This was all his fault. He was the one reducing her to this wanton, writhing mess of fervent passion and unrelenting desire. His kisses were illegal, with the way they fried her nerves with excitement. His fingers criminal in their deftness as they explored her body and rid her entirely of all thinking processes.

 

When his hand reached between her legs, though, she grabbed his wrist in panic, halting his advance.

 

Instead of looking worried and alarmed like the last time something similar had happened, Daiki’s gaze shifted to her, unfazed.

 

“It’s okay, Satsuki,” he told her gently, pressing a tender kiss to her parted lips. “You’ve done this before. _We’ve_ done this before,” he told her reassuringly, pulling the hand that had stopped his fingers to his mouth. He kissed her knuckles, and then turned her hand to kiss her palm, too. “Don’t be nervous.”

 

“I-I know, but…” she trailed off reluctantly, feeling increasingly more torn the more her frustration at her having interrupted him mounted.

 

“You don’t want this?” he asked, a twinge of hurt shining through his quiet question.

 

“I _do_ want it,” she almost whined out, shifting in her discomfort underneath him. “It’s just that… it seems _wrong_.”

 

“How is this wrong?” he parried her question, a small chuckle tearing from his chest. “We’re married. This is our bed. I want you, and if you want me, too, what’s wrong with acting upon those feelings?”

 

“I _know_ , but… I don’t remember any of that.” Her voice broke. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she had only herself to blame.

 

Not for forgetting him and all of their precious memories from before the crash—no. That was not why she was crying.

 

She was crying because it almost physically hurt to be so aroused and close to him, and be denied feeling his touch. And she was the one stopping him, frustrating her own needs.

 

But how could she _not_? When—

 

“I’ve practically known you for less than a few weeks, so isn’t it wrong to just jump into your bed like this? Doesn’t it make me seem weird?”

 

He could see that she was about to bring herself to near hysterics, so he shut her up with a kiss to make her settle down a little.

 

“Satsuki,” he whispered against her lips, “even if your mind doesn’t remember me right now, your body still does.”

 

His hand slid up from the outside of her knee up to her outer thigh, gently trailing her flesh underneath. He pressed the tip of his nose against the shell of her ear, his tongue darting out to take a playful lick at her lobe. A shiver raked her spine in response to his actions, her body unconsciously scooting closer to his on the bed.

 

It was true, she could tell—she could _feel_ it. There was something stronger than mere attraction and infatuation at play here – her body practically resonated with his with every single touch of his apt fingers. His caresses didn’t feel like something new to her skin—instead, they felt nostalgic. Familiar.

 

“Don’t listen to your reason right now. Just listen to what your body wants you to do, and let go for once.” He grazed his teeth against her ear, before turning to press a kiss to the side of her face. “You can trust yourself with me,” he whispered huskily against her skin.

 

His meaningful promise and the feel of his breath on her flesh made the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.

 

“Okay,” she rasped out breathlessly as his mouth swooped in to capture hers in another ardent lip lock.

 

And while his tongue sensually explored every nook and cranny in her mouth, dragging out a small moan from her every now and then, one of his hands travelled down to outline the fullness of one of her breasts, briefly pausing over it to give it a soft squeeze, then descending over the flatness of her belly. His callused hand felt a bit rough against her soft skin, but his touch was ephemerally light as compensation.

 

His hand continued further down, dipping in the space between her legs before she could stop him again.

 

She gasped as his fingers pressed against her folds through the fabric of her panties.

 

“You weren’t kidding when you said you wanted this, were you?” he asked rhetorically, feeling even more turned on at getting a feel of how moist her panties were to his touch.

 

“Shut up,” she retorted with no bite in her words, because at the very same second, his fingers slipped under the waistband of her underwear and brushed against her bare folds slickened with desire.

 

She felt a bit miffed at the feel of his smirk against her neck, but all thoughts of his smugness fled her mind when one of his nimble digits found the sensitive bundle of nerves over her entrance.

 

* * *

 

Three months after having woken up in that hospital bed found Satsuki unwittingly almost fully recovered from her trauma of that day—at least as far as her every day routine was concerned.

 

She lived in her apartment with her husband again. He drove her to and from work every day, and on their way home, they stopped by a supermarket for ingredients for the dinner—which he always cooked—or by a restaurant for take-out if he felt too lazy to bother with cooking. They watched some TV series and talk shows while they ate, showered and then usually retreated to bed together.

 

Her ring was no longer hanging on the chain around her neck, sitting proudly around her right ring finger instead—even though she didn’t feel entirely entitled to wear it yet, she found it disrespectful of herself to be the only one being a bad wife like that when he never once took off his wedding band.

 

Life was pretty much returning to normal, and it was truly fascinating. Even though there was still a huge, gaping hole in her memories, the one she had felt in her chest—suffocating her, tripping her step and making her awkward in every aspect of her life—was completely gone.

 

In its stead, her heart was filled with him—he was in her thoughts, in her dreams, in her veins, under her skin – in her every heartbeat.

 

She wondered how it was possible to have fallen so deeply in love with a person without really knowing much about them. And yet, possible or not, it was a fact – and she was enjoying every second of it.

 

No longer was she second-guessing her every word, wondering what was appropriate and what was not. No longer did she dwell on how long it would be before she finally recovered her memories—because no matter how long it would take, she was still going to be right there, next to him, whenever it happened.

 

And they would be making the most of their lives throughout it all.

 

* * *

 

When she heard that he and Takkun had called up some of the guys to get together for a basketball match together, she had immediately jumped up at the opportunity of getting to see all of them together after so long. And in a settling a bit less morbid than her hospital room, too.

 

After she spent an incredibly long time—at least it seemed so to the other men on the court—talking to Kagami and Kuroko, then bribing Murasakibara to share some of his sweets stash with her, Daiki shooed her out of the court so they could start their game.

 

They decided by drawing lots with 2 different tip-coloured sticks who would be on which team. Daiki ended teamed up with Takao, Midorima, Murasakibara and Himuro, while against them were Kuroko, Kagami, Kise, Kasamatsu and Sakurai (whom Daiki had extorted to come play with them the previous day when he heard from Kazunari that they were one person short of a 5-on-5 set up).

 

And as Satsuki threw the ball in the air for her husband and Kagami to jump for, she couldn’t help the grin on her face.

 

She hadn’t ever seen Daiki so pumped up about anything before, and he had even spent extra time training to get back some of his previous perseverance and power just for this day.

 

What was even more amusing for all the guys was that none of them had played basketball in a while, and most certainly not in such a company, so none of them knew how the match was going to end even after the teams were decided.

 

After they tipped off, it was hard to tell whether they were playing for real or just messing around, Satsuki noticed. She was keeping their score and time with a pocket watch, but even though both teams kept scoring, she couldn’t help but notice the occasional lapses between team members that diverted their attention from the game and more towards other matters.

 

Like when Daiki attempted to intimidate Sakurai into missing his three-pointer, by making a rather hilariously menacing expression. His tactic had worked, though, making the young man with a penchant for apologizing have his hand slip, throwing the ball towards the hoop a bit too powerfully. His mistake resulted in the ball ending in Daiki’s team possession.

 

“Hey! Referee! That was totally cheating!” Kagami burst out angrily, pointing an accusatory finger in Daiki’s direction. “This bastard is using dirty tricks to undermine the concentration of my team member!”

 

“He’s right—stop bullying poor Ryou, Daiki,” Satsuki agreed with a stern frown, making her husband give her an exaggerated pout.

 

“What?” he dragged out the syllable in a complaining tone. “I’m just teaching Ryou here what it’s like to be playing against me for once—isn’t that right, Ryou?”

 

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I was the one at fault! It’s my bad I missed that shot. Aomine-san didn’t do anything!” the auburn-haired young man all but shouted.

 

“Stop ganging up on our captain, Kaga-chin,” Murasakibara sighed and shook his head in dejection at their opponents’ tactics.

 

“Wha—Who’s ganging up on others?!” the redhead exclaimed, outraged, turning to look towards his partner for support. “Tetsuya, back me up here!”

 

“Can we just resume the match already?” the teal-headed guy said evenly, making Kagami’s jaw drop. “I want to play and I have yet to even touch the ball because of you guys’ childish bickering.”

 

Honestly, Satsuki wondered if there ever was a more ridiculous practice game than this one.

 

And throughout it all she couldn’t keep herself from grinning like an idiot.

 

They all looked like they were enjoying themselves so much. And watching them play like the old times together made it feel like they were still in high school, as though it were just yesterday when they were standing on a real court together like this.

 

As her pink orbs followed Daiki’s form on the court, she started feeling a much stronger feeling of déjà vu than she ever had before. Watching him running back and forth, with those impressive bursts of speed and agility of his, getting all fired up about winning, scoring from improbable positions, his form free and unstoppable.

 

There was something very familiar in watching Daiki playing the sport he used to adore.

 

And while she continued watching him—mesmerized, already unable to look away—the wheels of her mind started to turn.

 

The droplets of sweat were rolling down the sides of his face, dripping down to soak into the fabric of his jersey. As he ran, carried on his powerful legs, he stopped every now and then when the ball was out of bounds to wipe his forehead and face against his top, or his sleeve, or his wristband.

 

… Wait, what? He wasn’t carrying a wristband, was he? And his jersey was red right now, not black. What was wrong with her, making stuff up…

 

Her ears were ringing.

 

She shook her head to rid it of the fogginess, but the more she continued staring at him, the harder it became to focus.

 

Her heart started to race almost painfully in her chest as she kept watching him. The basketball loving Daiki who hadn’t even touched the ball in a couple of years now. The basketball loving Daiki who had left that passion behind when he found a job that needed all of his focus, and started a family with her.

 

_“It’s just miso soup and rice. I’m sure it won’t take you that long to figure it out!”_

_Her face bloomed into the most beaming smile he had seen on her face in a while before she flung herself at him, hugging him around the waist and burying her face in his chest._

_“Dai-chan!” she cried out in adoration. “Dai-chan’s the best hubby ever!”_

_Daiki chuckled again and patted her head fondly before he proceeded to go through the motions of how miso soup should be made together with her._

Her breathing laboured, coming out in quick, short puffs as her thoughts started racing for no apparent reason at all.

 

_“My new phone needs a new wallpaper!” she enthused, suddenly drawing the attention of half the diner to herself. “So let’s take a picture!”_

_Daiki made an incredulous face and his jaw hung open with a sceptical “Haa?”_

A groan tore from her throat as the thoughts overwhelmed her.

 

_She grinned and said in a sing-song voice, “Say cheese!” before leaning in to kiss Daiki’s cheek while her finger sank down to press the shutter of her phone’s camera._

 

The clipboard fell from between her numb fingers and clattered to the ground.

 

_“Wanna get married?” Daiki asked out of the blue just as they were sitting down to eat dinner one night._

_The waddle fell from her grip with a loud clang against the tiles of their kitchen counter. Her navy-haired lover turned his head partially in her direction to size her up with the most unreadable look on his face while she gawked at him, unable to say anything back to his proposal._

_That’s what it had been, right?! A_ proposal _?!_

_“_ What _?” she finally managed to articulate a word._

_Daiki shrugged noncommittally at her, a grin coming to his face afterwards._

_“It’s going to happen eventually, right? Or are you planning on breaking up with me?”_

_“_ No _,” she choked out defensively, and flopped down in her seat across the table from him. “But, but… that doesn’t mean we can just go ahead and get married!”_

_“Why not?” he said with that same unrelenting mischievous glint in his eyes that she remembered from their childhood days._

_It definitely didn’t help that she really couldn’t think of any plausible reason to counter his question with._

_“Let’s get married, Satsuki.”_

She put her open palm against her chest and attempted to calm the intermittence of her pulse.

 

_“I do,” she answered, the grandeur of the simple phrase emphasized by the band she pushed on his finger._

_Daiki smiled down at her, and she reciprocated the expression, her heart swelling in her chest at knowing that everything about this man—that sometimes infuriating grin, that volatile character of his, and his ever-present love for her—mind, body and soul—all of it was going to be hers from then till the end of time_.

 

While she was spacing out she didn’t notice that the ball was heading in her direction with an impressive speed. Having just bounced back after going through the hoop with one of Midorima’s ever-impressive super-long three-pointers, the ball zeroed in on Satsuki’s face despite all the guys’ warnings for her to watch out.

 

She staggered back a bit, her feet unstable underneath her, but before she could collapse she felt Daiki at her side, holding her up while sniggering.

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh,” he apologized unrepentantly. “But you really should’ve seen your face.” He chuckled some more before peering at her. “Are you okay? Let me see.”

 

He meant to pry away from her face the hand that had flown to clutch at her wounded nose. But he didn’t understand why she was staring at him in wide-eyed wonder, as though she were seeing a ghost.

 

Did the ball maybe hit her head harder than it had looked?

 

“Dai-chan,” she murmured in a breathless whisper then.

 

“What?” he said automatically. “Are you in that much pain? Take that hand away, Satsuki.”

 

By that time the rest of the boys had gathered behind Daiki in a half-circle, throwing her glances of varying degrees of worry.

 

“Dai-chan,” she repeated, louder this time.

 

Tears welled in her eyes and immediately, Daiki felt alarmed. He was never good at dealing with her crying, no matter how many years passed.

 

“ _Dai-chan_ ,” she echoed again, and it finally sank into his mind what she was calling him.

 

A nickname he hadn’t heard in three months.

 

“I remember.” The tears kept cascading down the sides of her face, their flow unrelenting. “I remember it all.”

 

Daiki’s jaw dropped slightly ajar, his fingers holding onto her shoulders tightening barely perceptibly over her flesh.

 

“Is Satsuki-chan okay?” Kazunari piped in behind the navy-haired man. “Did something happen?”

 

Her hands rose, trembling, from nursing her nose to cradle Daiki’s face gingerly in their hold. She shook her head slowly while her tears continued falling.

 

“Dai-chan, I’m sorry. I’m so, so, _so very sorry_ ,” she said over and over, caressing his cheek fondly. “I put you through something so horrible. Please, forgive me. I’ll spend the rest of my life atoning for it, trying to make it up to you. I’m so, so sorry…” she cried pitifully while staring into his eyes.

 

Before anyone could ask what was going on and why Daiki stood there, stupefied, the man in question came back to life, pulling Satsuki swiftly into a strong hug.

 

“I’m a bit lost what’s happening anymore,” Yukio told to Ryouta, who shrugged as well.

 

Midorima pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with a haughty huff.

 

“We should leave,” he told the rest of them, making many eyebrows quirk in response.

 

“Yep, we’re done here for today—we’re one player and one referee short, so we can leave this for a better time.”

 

“But what happened?” Kagami insisted while the triple-team of Midorima, Takao and Kuroko ushered him and the rest of the guys in direction opposite of the hugging couple. “What’s up with the Aomines?”

 

“They’re having a moment,” Kuroko said sagely with a private smile. “It would be rude to infringe on it.”

 

And while the gaggle of adolescent men got further and further away until they eventually disappeared from sight and earshot, Satsuki was still held on to tightly by a man almost twice her size.

 

Instead of protesting against the strength he was putting into the embrace, or that he was sweaty and too close when they were out in public, Satsuki kept crying and clinging tightly to him, too. Her fingers fisted the fabric of the back of his jersey, her sobs racking her body.

 

“I’m so sorry, Dai-chan. I put you in such a horrible position. I’m the worst person ever,” she whimpered out, her fingers digging the fabric of his shirt that they were leaving marks into the skin on his back.

 

Daiki’s shoulders trembled with emotion as he pulled her even closer into his embrace. He shook his head against her neck before burying his nose in the crook of it.

 

“I love you,” she cried. “I love you so much. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for enduring. You’re my unsung hero.”

 

A strangled sound tore from Daiki’s chest and when he dropped to his knees, Satsuki did too.

 

“It’s over now,” she told him, caressing his head lovingly. “You can relax now. It’s going to be okay. Everything is all right,” she assured him with a sniffle, burying her face into his chest.

 

She cried for so long.

 

And so did he.

 

She had almost never seen him cry, so as he wept against her shoulder now, she knew that what she had done had been truly terrible—to have made him feel like this.

 

She cried for having ever allowed her most wonderful memories of the most important person in her life get sealed away for so long. She cried for dealing with the aftermath of it in the most horrible way possible. She cried for him, and for how far she’d made him fall in his despair, forcing someone as strongly spirited and mentally stable as Daiki resort to drinking himself into a stupor just so he could get a reprieve from the unbearable hell his days had turned into thanks to her stupidity.

 

She cried for almost having lost the most important person in her life twice in those past three months—once, in that bus crash, and once more, when he’d almost ended their relationship.

 

And Daiki?

 

Daiki cried because he was so overwhelmingly relieved and happy to have his wife—the woman who knew all of his flaws, and loved him despite them— _because of them_ —back in his arms, where she belonged.

 

* * *

 

_fin_


End file.
